CollegeBetter: Parimutuel Betting Market Experiments on Student Procrastination

University of California, Davis researcher Lester Lusher conducted lab and field experiments evaluating the CollegeBetter.com program. The program uses a parimutuel betting market as a commitment device and monetary incentive to help college students overcome present bias and procrastination. Students placed monetary wagers on themselves to achieve a 'commitment challenge,' with winners recovering their wagers and splitting losing wagers.

Use Cases

• Analyzing the effectiveness of monetary incentives based on the described parimutuel betting mechanism
• Studying participant selection patterns based on the finding that low-achieving, overconfident, self-identified procrastinators were interested
• Evaluating the impact of random assignment on challenge achievement based on the described field experiment results
• Investigating the role of loss aversion based on the finding that risking one's own money was a principal contributor to effectiveness

Strengths

• Data is derived from both lab and field experiments, suggesting controlled and real-world validation
• Findings include specific participant characteristics, such as low-achieving, overconfident, self-identified procrastinators
• Results show a positive treatment effect, with randomly selected participants more likely to achieve the commitment challenge

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified

Provenance

Source

Lester Lusher, University of California, Davis

Collection Method

Lab and field experiments evaluating the CollegeBetter.com program