An Experimental Study On Effort And Sabotage In Dynamic Tournaments

With the strengthening of the consolidation trend of globalization, the market andindustry environment tend to be more complex, dynamic and uncertainty; at the sametime, the agents’ behavior is not static.Consequently, tournament mechanisms have beenstudied extensively, at the same time, the dynamic tournament has aroused the concern ofacademics.Tournaments mechanisms are usually concentrated in a static environment. That is tosay, the agents according to the arrangements set by the clients, choose their own level ofeffort before the start of the contest, even throughout the tournaments period, the level ofeffort is not changed. However, the reality is not the case. First of all, the tournament inreality is often carried out in a longer period of time, and essentially tournamentsmechanism has the typical characteristics of multi-stage. Second, in real life, informationcommunication, information leaks, malicious inquire and periodicity summarize, andother factors, lead to the agents a general understanding of the current state of itscompetitors to adjust their own behavior, which may in the after-contest phase. Third, theagents who have learned that competitors’ performance information, in order to win, cannot only improve their own level of effort, but also sabotage. Finally, the starting point ofthe agents joining the tournaments, can lead to an unfair problem.To enrich the content of research, the proposed method of experimental study of thereal efforts focuses on what’s the influence on agents’ behavior of effort and sabotagebased on the following factors, whether the stage performance information is public, thesabotage cost is the high or low, whether the starting points are the same.The real efforts in experimental study of100students was carried out in this paper,we draw the following conclusions:(1) When the stage performance information is notpublic, the agents can’t select the appropriate behavior according to the competitor’s levelof effort and performance information. Agents’, in this case, level of performance will belower than the situation in which the stage performance is public;(2) Sabotage willchange with sabotage cost, if the cost is high,the sabotage will reduce; on contrary,if thecost is low, the sabotage will increase;(3)The agents who joined the competition after thetournament began a period of time, may not lag behind other agents, even can get theequal probability of winning compared to the other side;(4) When the agents have thedifferent starting points, the "unfair" phenomenon does not lead to the overall output lower than the same mechanism as the starting point is the same, and along with sabotagecost increased, the agents’ effort level also increase, showing a better level of output;(5)Inorder to get a better career concern, the agents will not intentionally concealed theirability in the early stage of the dynamic tournament to confuse competitors, but willchoose to improve their level of effort in the two-stage to maximize the ultimate benefit inorder to enable the client to believe their competence.In summary, the stage performance information public can promote agents to make areasonable behavior to improve the final performance; the sabotage cost rising willeffectively reduce the agents’ sabotage behavior; latecomer, although at a disadvantage oftime, will forward to catch up, to achieve evenly divided state; the output in differentstarting points tournament is not lower than the same starting point output, as "unfair"mechanism stimulate the agents’ effort level, especially the higher sabotage cost, thehigher output; agents tend to raise the level of a two-stage efforts, abandon the strategy ofdeliberately concealing the true level of effort, in order to achieve the career concern.