Competition and prosociality: A field experiment in Ghana

Kerstin Grosch, Marcela Ibanez and Angelino Viceisza

No 266141, GlobalFood Discussion Papers from Georg-August-Universitaet Goettingen, GlobalFood, Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development

Abstract: Competitive bonuses are commonly used to promote higher productivity in the workplace. Yet, these types of incentives could have negative spillovers on coworkers' prosocial behavior in subsequent tasks. To investigate this question, we conduct a lab-in-the-eld experiment in Ghana. In a between-subjects design, participants complete a real-eort task under a competitive, threshold, or random payment while holding payment dierentials constant across treatments. Before and after, we measure prosociality through a public goods and a social value orientation game. Competition reduces prosociality when the dispersion of payments is high. However, when there is less at stake, competition does not aect prosociality.

Keywords: Institutional and Behavioral Economics; Labor and Human Capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-12-19
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:gagfdp:266141

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.266141

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