- Title
- Incentive effects: assessing effort and heterogeneity in professional tennis
- Creator
- Chadwick, Byron James Rhett
- ThesisAdvisor
- Botha, Ferdi
- Subject
- Professional sports -- Economic aspects
- Subject
- Tennis players -- Wages
- Subject
- Tennis -- Tournaments
- Subject
- Achievement motivation
- Subject
- Incentive awards
- Date
- 2019
- Type
- text
- Type
- Thesis
- Type
- Masters
- Type
- MCom
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10962/69467
- Identifier
- vital:29541
- Description
- This study explores the impact incentive effects have on the level of effort exerted by professional men and women tennis players. Understanding what impact incentives have on tennis players can allow for greater understanding of the impact incentives have in the workplace and how employees react to different incentive schemes. The study makes use of data from both the ATP and WTA tour of every tournament played during the 2016 season. This includes player statistics, tournament statistics and in-game statistics from the quarter-finals, semi-finals and finals of each tournament in an attempt to account for initial seeding effects. This provides a total of 440 ATP matches and 389 WTA matches for an overall sample size of 829 professional tennis matches. The findings from this study illustrate in the last three rounds of all the tournaments played, for both male and females, money is not considered to be a key motivator for players. The ATP and WTA results suggest that competitors do not alter their effort levels depending on the level of the tournament. This illustrates that players exert similar effort levels regardless of the amount of money or ranking points available. The outcome of the findings supports that of the capability effect of heterogeneity on players’ performance. This means that the outcome of a match is linked more to the abilities of the competitors involved as opposed to the incentives available. Thus, players will adjust their effort levels according to their opponent and not because there are more money or ranking points available. This suggests that both the ATP and WTA should aim to reduce the differences in abilities amongst the players in an attempt to raise the attractiveness of the sport. Overall, the findings from this study illustrate that the capability effect outweighs that of the incentive effect.
- Format
- 55 pages, pdf
- Publisher
- Rhodes University, Faculty of Commerce, Economics and Economic History
- Language
- English
- Rights
- Chadwick, Byron James Rhett
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Collections
RU Department of Economics and Economic History
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | Adobe Acrobat PDF | 939 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |