Abstract
App-based tasks with soft commitments and social accountability (the ability of others to see one’s intentions and behaviors) have been shown to improve performance on exams among college students, especially in online classes. This study adds to the literature by investigating whether social accountability and commitment devices complement each other in motivating desired behaviors, such as the likelihood of committing to complete a designated task. In a randomized controlled trial of 210 students in fall of 2020, some of the students’ usernames were anonymized to generate variation in social accountability. Results show that social accountability, when the student’s name is revealed to other participants, leads to a lower likelihood of committing to a task, especially among students in face-to-face classes. A 9.7 to 11 percentage point decline in commitments was observed, which is equivalent to a 20% reduction in commitments compared to participants who remain anonymous. While surprising, this finding is consistent with higher effectiveness of commitments among online students who are less likely to know their classmates and, therefore, face less social accountability. This suggests that the effectiveness of commitment devices used in face-to-face classes may be enhanced with anonymity by increasing the likelihood of commitments. Therefore, designers of policies that induce behavioral change should consider whether to make commitments and participation statistics public or allow participants to remain anonymous.
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Data Availability
The anonymized data are available from the authors upon reasonable request.
Notes
The face-to-face course was accompanied by a temporary dual-delivery online synchronous option for those in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) quarantine or isolation.
While 590 students consented to receiving daily text messages, only 210 actually participated by committing to at least one daily task during the period of the experiment. The decision whether to engage at all with the intervention was not correlated with social accountability since students did not know whether their username would be anonymous when making the initial decision to participate.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank ProHabits for the use of their behavioral support platform. They also thank Margo LeClaire, Julianna Crang, Olga Gutan, Enrique Salonga, Josephine Klein, Tommy Lacher, and Jeffrey Nebel for their diligent research assistance. This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
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Felkey, A.J., Dziadula, E. & Chiang, E.P. Does Social Accountability Motivate Commitment Behavior Among College Students?. Int Adv Econ Res 29, 293–301 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11294-023-09878-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11294-023-09878-7