How do People Procrastinate to Meet a Deadline?

Relying on e-learning data, I report here on an empirical investigation of daily homework progress to assess procrastination among high school students, whose behavior is susceptible to present-bias. The homework entails a non-binding goal for the students. The main findings were as follows: First, the goal encouraged a considerable number of students to study more to achieve it. Second, high achievers procrastinated until close to the deadline, particularly females for Math homework. Finally, a considerable subset of high achievers worked hard at the last minute to meet a non-binding deadline. These findings imply that a non-binding goal strongly motivates such students' self-control in goal achievement; however, the process is one of procrastination, and the deadline prevents further procrastination despite being non-binding.

Hitotsubashi Institute for Advanced Study, Hitotsubashi University

2016-09

English(eng)

technical report

VoR

44

Discussion paper series / Hitotsubashi Institute for Advanced Study, Hitotsubashi University

https://hdl.handle.net/10086/28100