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2.4. ANALYSES 43
Concerning the control variables, I find a negative and significant influence of the unhypothesized
main effect of comparability and the use of firm-level measures on RPE use.
This former finding is counterintuitive. Although this study does not formulate explicit
expectations concerning the direct effect of comparability on RPE use, it is plausible that
a potential significant relation is positive. This is because comparability is a necessary condition
for peer comparisons. Bivariately, the two variables are not significantly correlated
(r = -0.08, p = 0.19).
Furthermore, the results show a positive significant effect of contractibility. Other control
variables (business unit and firm size and the sector dummies) do not yield significant
results. Neither does the information asymmetry variable, which was included to rule out
the possibility that the significant coefficient of the interaction effect between information
asymmetry and uniqueness is caused by a lower-order effect (i.e., a main effect of comparability
on RPE-Use) (conform: Hartmann & Moers 1999, Echambadi et al. 2006).
However, the data are censored. A group of 21 respondents does not use RPE. To better
suit the left-censoring characteristic of the dependent variable RPE-Use, I estimate a Tobit
model, which is a regression technique especially suited to analysing limited (censored)
dependent variables. The Tobit model yields results similar to those of the OLS analysis.
This model supports the hypotheses regarding the effects of common uncertainty (H1) and
the interaction effect between information asymmetry and comparability (H2). To facilitate
the comparison with the results of the OLS model, I report the McKelvey-Zavoina statistic.
This statistic is a pseudo-R 2 measure that comes closest to the familiar R 2 from the OLS
regression (Veall & Zimmermann 1994). According to the McKelvey-Zavoina statistic, the
Tobit analysis explains 7.9% of the variance in RPE-Use. The results of the Tobit analysis
are qualitatively similar to those of the OLS analysis, as is shown in table 2.12.
2.4.3.2 Analyses with RPE-based-Targets Measure
I also test the model with the RPE-based-Targets measure. RPE-based-Targets relates to
the explicit impact of peer performance on the performance target difficulty. This model
yields better test-statistics. As presented in table 2.13, I find a significant model that fits
the data. The ANOVA F-statistic is higher than the RPE-Use model (p < 0.01), and
the reported R 2 is higher at 12.2%. The qualitative results differ partially from those of
the analyses with explicit RPE use. Similar to the previous model, I find a significant
positive effect of common uncertainty (hypothesis H1), but the hypothesized interaction
of information asymmetry and comparability (hypothesis H2) does not hold in this model.
Instead, this model supports the interaction between common uncertainty and information
asymmetry (hypothesis H3). The results are shown in table 2.13.