More Money, More Problems? Can High Pay be Coercive and Repugnant?

IRBs can disallow high incentives they deem coercive. A vignette study on MTurk concerning participation in medical trials shows that a substantial minority of subjects concurs. They think high incentives cause more regret, and that more people would be better off without the opportunity to particip...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The American economic review 2015-05, Vol.105 (5), p.357-360
Main Authors: Ambuehl, Sandro, Niederle, Muriel, Roth, Alvin E.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bioethics
Blood & organ donations
Clinical trials
Compensation
Decision
Decision making
Economic incentives
Economic models
Economic statistics
Economic theory
Economics
Economists
Endowments
Ethics
Externality
Financial transactions
Incentive pay
Incentives
Institutional review boards
Legal ethics
Medical ethics
Medical research
Monetary situation
Moral judgment
MORAL VALUES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
Participation
Payments
Studies
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:IRBs can disallow high incentives they deem coercive. A vignette study on MTurk concerning participation in medical trials shows that a substantial minority of subjects concurs. They think high incentives cause more regret, and that more people would be better off without the opportunity to participate. We model observers as judging the ethicality of incentives by partially using their own utility. The model predicts that payments are repugnant only to the extent that they affect the participation decision, and more so for larger transactions. Incentivizing poorer participants is more repugnant, and in-kind incentives are less repugnant than monetary incentives.
ISSN:0002-8282
1944-7981
DOI:10.1257/aer.p20151034