This study examines how past performance moderates the effect of the size of the prize on tournament self-selection. We identify two types of trajectories that play simultaneous and unique roles in moderating the influence of prize on an agent’s decision to enter a tournament: within-period trajectory, which reflects an agent’s short-term performance streak in the tournaments recently entered, and across-period trajectory, which reflects an agent’s long-term performance streak in the same tournament across different periods. We find that positive (negative) within-period and across-period trajectories strengthen (weaken) the positive effect of the size of the prize on tournament entry. Although both performance trajectories have a significant and sizable influence, we find that within-period trajectory plays the strongest moderating effect. We draw on the representativeness heuristic and the availability heuristic to explain our findings. We study these notions using 54,915 self-selection decisions that professional golfers have taken over a ten-year period (1996–2006) when entering PGA Tour tournaments. We draw implications for the craft of contest design.

本研究考察了过去的表现如何调节奖金大小对锦标赛自我选择的影响。我们确定了两种类型的轨迹，它们在调节奖金对代理人参加锦标赛决定的影响方面同时发挥独特作用：期间内轨迹，反映了代理人在最近参加的锦标赛中的短期表现，以及跨-周期轨迹，它反映了代理人在同一锦标赛中不同时期的长期表现。我们发现正（负）期内和跨期轨迹加强（削弱）奖金大小对锦标赛参赛资格的积极影响。尽管这两种绩效轨迹都有显着且相当大的影响，但我们发现期间内轨迹发挥了最强的调节作用。我们利用代表性启发式和可用性启发式来解释我们的发现。我们使用 职业高尔夫球手在过去十年（1996 年至 2006 年）参加 PGA 巡回赛时做出的 54,915 次自我选择决定来研究这些概念。我们对竞赛设计的工艺产生影响。