Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

In this paper we experimentally study procrastination in students' academic work -- a context procrastination appears widespread in. We design a specific experimental context in the field: a student must exert costly effort to perform a certain number of tasks, in his/her own private residence over the course of his/her normal daily activities, by a fixed deadline for a monetary payment after completion of each task.

In such a dynamic choice context, students with a present-bias might adopt various internal (psychological) and/or external self-control mechanisms to avoid procrastinating on the task(s). We study explicitly the role of binding deadlines in affecting procrastination.

Furthermore, by comparing students' behavior when faced with a single task versus multiple tasks, we are able to indirectly observe the operation of internal self-control mechanisms induced by repetition.

We identify and estimate the deep preference parameters at the root of the behavior of students, notably, their present-bias and other possible behavioral aspects of their decision making. Since delay might be an optimal response to the evolution of effort costs, we separately identify students' preference parameters from the properties of the costs they face.

Our experiment provides us with several interesting findings. First, students who report having more unanticipated events over the course of the experiment are less likely to complete tasks. Rather than procrastination, this is consistent with optimizing behavior on their part when faced with unanticipated events with higher rewards than the earnings associated with completing our tasks. Nonetheless, we document a fairly robust demand for commitment in the multiple task treatments. When given the opportunity, a substantial number of students self-impose binding deadlines (this is not the case in the single task treatment). Furthermore, those students who do self-impose deadlines report themselves as being less conscientious than those who do not self-impose deadlines. These results, when taken together, appear to provide compelling evidence for the presence of sophisticated students with present-bias.

Our experimental data also provide descriptive evidence that the presence of deadlines does not increase task completion rates. Subjects in treatments in which they are given the opportunity to self-impose binding deadlines, have the lowest task completion rate, significantly lower than the completion rate when all deadlines are at the end of the experiment.

Finally, we structurally estimate present bias and other possible behavioral aspects of students' decision making by fitting the experimental data on both completion rates and failed attempts through a stylized stopping time choice model. The point estimate of present bias is 30%, which we estimate affects about a third of the students.

Most importantly, however, present-bias appears however not to significantly affect behavior in the context of repeated similar tasks. This suggests various frame effects whereby repeated similar task activate internal self-control. Beyond present bias, our results indicate that other behavioral characteristics play an important role in inducing procrastination.