How Anonymity Affects Peer Evaluations under Peer-Based Ranking Incentive Systems
Thorsten Knauer et al.
Abstract
Peer evaluation systems are becoming increasingly important in firms. We experimentally investigate whether and how anonymity when evaluating peers (no versus yes) influences how employees evaluate their peers when an incentive is linked to peer evaluations (no versus yes) and whether these factors distort evaluations. We argue that, according to self-efficacy theory, the economic and psychological costs and benefits vary depending on both factors. As predicted, we find that in the absence of incentives, evaluations are upwardly distorted, particularly when employees are not anonymous. Anonymity reduces these upward distortions. In contrast, when incentives are present, anonymity leads to downward distortions, which are mitigated when evaluations are not anonymous. Our results inform managers about the contradictory effects of anonymity depending on the incentive scheme utilized and their impacts on the extent of peer evaluation distortions. Data Availability: Data are available from the authors upon request. JEL Classifications: M40; M41.
1 citation
Evidence weight
Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40
| F · citation impact | 0.16 × 0.4 = 0.06 |
| M · momentum | 0.53 × 0.15 = 0.08 |
| V · venue signal | 0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03 |
| R · text relevance † | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.