GENDER DIFFERENCES IN MOTIVATIONAL CROWDING OUT OF WORK PERFORMANCE

This paper shows that prior financial incentives induce a crowding‐out effect when incentives are discontinued. In our real‐effort experiment workers receive a piece rate before monetary incentives are substituted by a one‐time payment. In this case, workers' performance significantly drops whe...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Economic inquiry 2019-01, Vol.57 (1), p.206-226
Main Authors: Benndorf, Volker, Rau, Holger A., Sölch, Christian
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Analysis
Business enterprises
Crowding
Discontinued
Economic aspects
Economic incentives
Employee incentives
Employee motivation
Employee performance
Financial incentives
Gender differences
Labor costs
Management
Monetary incentives
Productivity
Psychological aspects
Workers
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This paper shows that prior financial incentives induce a crowding‐out effect when incentives are discontinued. In our real‐effort experiment workers receive a piece rate before monetary incentives are substituted by a one‐time payment. In this case, workers' performance significantly drops when receiving the one‐time payment. The effect is driven by a fraction of men who reduce effort substantially, whereas women constantly perform well. We find that this motivational crowding‐out effect disappears when men do not have prior experience of a piece rate. In a series of control treatments, we discard several alternative explanations besides motivational crowding out. (JEL C91, J16, M54)
ISSN:0095-2583
1465-7295
DOI:10.1111/ecin.12718