How Much Does Honesty Cost? Small Bonuses Can Motivate Ethical Behavior
Long Wang () and
John Murnighan
Additional contact information
Long Wang: Department of Management, College of Business, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong
Management Science, 2017, vol. 63, issue 9, 2903-2914
Abstract:
Although people generally try to avoid lying, the lure of potential monetary payoffs often leads to unethical behavior. The current research investigates whether small monetary rewards for honesty help people resist the temptations of larger incentives or whether they backfire and lead to even more dishonesty. Four experiments address these issues. Experiment 1 shows that a $1 bonus led people to act more honestly when they could have lied to obtain $4; an identical bonus, however, did not increase dishonesty. Experiment 2 uses a different context and again shows that a $1 bonus led people to act more honestly; it also finds no evidence that this small payoff crowded out subsequent altruistic behavior. Experiment 3 shows that a $1 bonus increased people’s honesty even when the payoffs for lying increased to $8, $12, and $16, but not when the payoff for lying increased to $20. Experiment 4 finds that smaller bonuses for honesty still had an impact, although it tended to be somewhat weaker. In addition, compared with no bonus, the combined effect of several small monetary bonuses (1 dollar, 75 cents, 50 cents, and 25 cents) marginally reduced lying.
Keywords: honesty; money; incentive; monetary reward; morality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)
Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2016.2480 (application/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:inm:ormnsc:v:63:y:2017:i:9:p:2903-2914
Access Statistics for this article
More articles in Management Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().