Personality Traits and Performance Contracts: Evidence from a Field Experiment among Maternity Care Providers in India

Katherine Donato, Grant Miller, Manoj Mohanan (), Yulya Truskinovsky and Marcos Vera-Hernandez

American Economic Review, 2017, vol. 107, issue 5, 506-10

Abstract: We study how agents respond to performance incentives according to key personality traits (conscientiousness and neuroticism) through a field experiment offering financial incentives for improving maternal and neonatal health outcomes to rural Indian doctors. More conscientious providers performed better--but improved less--under performance incentives. The effect of the performance incentives was also smaller for providers with higher levels of neuroticism. Our results contribute to a growing body of empirical research on heterogeneous responses to incentives and have implications for worker selection.

JEL-codes: C93 I11 I14 I18 J13 J16 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.p20171105
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