Incentivizing Engagement: Experimental Evidence on Journalist Performance Pay

Ivan Balbuzanov, Jared Gars, Mateusz Stalinski and Emilia Tjernstrom
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Ivan Balbuzanov: Department of Economics, University of Melbourne
Jared Gars: Food and Resource Economics Department, University of Florida
Mateusz Stalinski: University of Warwick and CAGE
Emilia Tjernstrom: Macquarie University

The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) from University of Warwick, Department of Economics

Abstract: Digital platforms increasingly compensate content creators based on engagement metrics, yet the effects of these incentives remain poorly understood. We conducted a field experiment with a Kenyan news outlet to study how high-intensity performance incentives affect content production, quality, and journalist well-being in digital media. We randomly assigned writers to either pay-per-click (PPC) or piece-rate contracts. The PPC contract tripled per-article pageviews and increased daily pageviews by 107%, but reduced the number of published articles by 74%. While PPC writers earned more per article, their overall earnings fell, lowering the firm’s wage bill and increasing profits. However, these gains came at a cost : PPC writers shifted content production away from local news and towards attention-grabbing political stories. PPC writers also used less positive language in both headlines and article bodies. Our results show that engagement-based pay boosts reader traffic but caution that this may come at the cost of compromised coverage diversity, local news provision, and journalist well-being.

Keywords: performance pay; labor productivity; media engagement; field experiment JEL Codes: C93; J24; J33; L82; M52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wrk:warwec:1570

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