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    Incentives for Prosocial Behavior: The Role of Reputations
    15 Jan 2016Working Paper Summaries

    Incentives for Prosocial Behavior: The Role of Reputations

    by Christine L. Exley
    This study documents how small monetary incentives discourage volunteering when they are public and thus introduce a “greedy” signal. The discouragement from this greedy signal, however, is less pronounced among volunteers with public reputations, or those who are likely known not to be too greedy.
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    Author Abstract

    Do monetary incentives encourage volunteering? Or, do they introduce a "greedy" signal and hence crowd out the motivation to volunteer? Since the strength of this greedy signal is normally unobserved, the answer is theoretically unclear, and corresponding empirical evidence is mixed. I overcome this ambiguity by examining individuals for whom the greedy signal strength is likely weak—those with public reputations about their past volunteer behavior. In a laboratory experiment, I show that crowd out in response to public incentives is much less likely among those with public, as opposed to private, reputations.

    Paper Information

    • Full Working Paper Text
    • Working Paper Publication Date: November 2015
    • HBS Working Paper Number: 16-063
    • Faculty Unit(s): Negotiation, Organizations & Markets
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    Christine L. Exley
    Christine L. Exley
    Marvin Bower Associate Professor
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