Goals as Reference Points in Marathon Running: A Novel Test of Reference-Dependence: Online Appendix

We solicited participants through marathon organizers, organized running groups, marathon training programs, message boards, and athletic shops. The study was advertised as a study on the relationship between marathon performance and satisfaction. Over the course of three years (2007-2009), we recruited prospective marathon runners for our targeted marathons, specifically Boston, 2008; Chicago, 2007-2009; Grandma’s, 2008; Los Angeles, 2008; Marine Corps, 2007-2009; New York City, 2009; Portland (OR), 2007; Rock ‘n’ Roll (San Diego), 2008; and Twin Cities, 2007-2009. Each of these marathons was one of the 15 largest U.S. marathons of its year, ranging from 6,875 finishers for the 2008 Grandma’s Marathon to 38,557 finishers for the 2007 New York City Marathon. The number of total finishers and number of survey participants for each marathon is given in Table 1. ∗Fordham University, Gabelli School of Business, 1790 Broadway, Room 11-45, New York, NY 10019 ([email protected]) †University of Chicago, Booth School of Business, 5807 S. Woodlawn Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637 ([email protected]) ‡University of Chicago, Booth School of Business, 5807 S. Woodlawn Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637 ([email protected]) §University of St. Thomas, Opus College of Business ([email protected]) 1We also recruited marathoners from the 2007 Honolulu, 2007 Philadelphia, and 2008 San Francisco Marathons. Because these three marathons yielded only 65 participants total (26 of which had usable data), we dropped these participants from our analyses. Including these participants does not meaningfully change the results presented in the main text. For example, Ĵ in Table 1 in the main text, Model (2), changes 0.967 (χ2(1) = 24.34, p < .001) to 0.966 (χ2(1) = 24.60, p < .001). 2Marathon statistics obtained from http://MarathonGuide.com.