Gender differences in motivational crowding out of work perfomance

Volker Benndorf, Holger A. Rau and Christian Sölch

No 304, University of Göttingen Working Papers in Economics from University of Goettingen, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper studies motivational crowding-out effects after financial incentives are lowered. In a real-effort setting, workers receive a piece rate before financial incentives are substituted by a one-time payment. Under the fixed payment, effort is significantly lower only when preceded by piece-rate incentives. The decrease is driven by a fraction of men who reduce their effort by 12%, whereas women constantly perform well. We find that this motivational crowding-out effect disappears when men do not have prior experience of a piece rate. In a series of control treatments, we discard all alternative explanations besides from motivational crowding out.

Keywords: gender differences; incentives; motivational crowding out; real-effort task (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 J16 M54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-gen, nep-hrm and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:cegedp:304

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