City Research Online

Abstract

This article explores the demand for soft, self-imposed commitment, and subsequent compliance behaviour, using a framed field study in a higher education setting. We find a substantial soft commitment demand and a remarkably high failure to comply with the chosen commitment. Students are more likely to demand soft commitment if they expect the task to be more time-consuming and their relative performance to be lower. Failure to comply is associated with previous grade and personality traits. We find no evidence that soft commitment affects grades.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2017 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricteduse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Publisher Keywords:	Soft commitment, deadlines, procrastination, education
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory H Social Sciences > HM Sociology L Education > LB Theory and practice of education
Departments:	School of Policy & Global Affairs School of Policy & Global Affairs > Economics
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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