Free to Choose: Testing the Pure Motivation Effect of Autonomous Choice

Tomas Sjöström (), Levent Ülkü () and Radovan Vadovic ()
Additional contact information
Tomas Sjöström: Department of Economics, Rutgers University
Levent Ülkü: Department of Economics, Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México, http://facultad.itam.mx/es/profesoresDetalles.php?id_profesor=377
Radovan Vadovic: Department of Economics, Carleton University, http://www.carleton.ca/economics/people/vadovic-radovan/

No 17-11, Carleton Economic Papers from Carleton University, Department of Economics

Abstract: We conduct an experimental test of the long-standing conjecture that autonomy increases motivation and job performance. Subjects face a menu consisting of two projects: one risky and one safe. The probability that the risky project succeeds depends on the subject’s e?ort. In one treatment, subjects choose a project from the menu; in the other treatment, they are assigned a project from the menu. Using a di?erence-in-di?erence approach that controls for selection e?ects, we show that autonomy (the right to choose a project) has a signi?cant pure motivation e?ect on e?ort. The e?ect is consistent with aversion to anticipated regret, but not with standard expected-utility maximization. Futher, as predicted by regret theory, e?ort on the (chosen) risky project is increasing in the return to the (unchosen) safe project, and the pure motivation e?ect is greater, the riskier is the risky project. Finally, we ?nd a signi?cant negative relationship between the strength of the pure motivation e?ect and the subjects’ expected earnings. Classification-

Pages: 45 pages
Date: 2017-09-18
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-ppm and nep-upt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published: Carleton Economic Papers

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.carleton.ca/economics/wp-content/uploads/cep17-11.pdf

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:car:carecp:17-11

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Carleton Economic Papers from Carleton University, Department of Economics C870 Loeb Building, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa Ontario, K1S 5B6 Canada.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Court Lindsay ().