Doing Good or Doing Well? Image Motivation and Monetary Incentives in Behaving Prosocially

Dan Ariely, Anat Bracha and Stephan Meier
Additional contact information
Dan Ariely: Duke University

No 2968, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper experimentally examines image motivation – the desire to be liked and well-regarded by others – as a driver in prosocial behavior (doing good), and asks whether extrinsic monetary incentives (doing well) have a detrimental effect on prosocial behavior due to crowding out of image motivation. By definition, image depends on one’s behavior being visible to other people. Using this unique property we show that image is indeed an important part of the motivation to behave prosocially. Moreover, we show that extrinsic incentives interact with image motivation and are therefore less effective in public than in private. Together, these results imply that image motivation is crowded out by monetary incentives; which in turn means that monetary incentives are more likely to be counterproductive for public prosocial activities than for private ones.

Keywords: image motivation; extrinsic incentives; prosocial behavior; experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C90 D64 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2007-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe and nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (84)

Published - published in: American Economic Review, 2009, 99 (1), 544–555

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Related works:
Journal Article: Doing Good or Doing Well? Image Motivation and Monetary Incentives in Behaving Prosocially (2009)
Working Paper: Doing good or doing well? Image motivation and monetary incentives in behaving prosocially (2007)
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