Procrastination Problem in Meeting Homework Deadlines—Evidence from Quasi-experiment—

抄録

Aided with unique “study log” data retrieved from e-learning, we directly measure daily homework progress to flexibly assess procrastination behavior of high school students, whose behavior is known to be susceptible to present-bias, one of the impediments for adolescents' studying. Specifically the homework is merely a non-binding goal. Our main findings are followings; first, the non-binding goal encourages considerable number of students to study more to achieve the goal. Second, mostly, the progress of the high achievers are quite intensive right before the deadline, particularly in Math for female. Finally, considerable number of high achievers study hard to try to meet the deadline without fine, even when they face with huge burdens as a result of their procrastination, or stress from the task. While the first and third findings suggest that the non-binding goal indeed assists students to exert strong effort to attenuate present-bias, the second finding shows that the exertion is procrastinated until right before the deadline, implying that present-bias preferences still have an explanatory power in the dynamics.