Incentives for creativity

Sanjiv Erat () and Uri Gneezy
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Sanjiv Erat: University of California

Experimental Economics, 2016, vol. 19, issue 2, No 1, 269-280

Abstract: Abstract We investigate whether piece-rate and competitive incentives affect creativity, and if so, how the incentive effect depends on the form of the incentives. We find that while both piece-rate and competitive incentives lead to greater effort relative to a base-line with no incentives, neither type of incentives improve creativity relative to the base-line. More interestingly, we find that competitive incentives are in fact counter-productive in that they reduce creativity relative to base-line condition. In line with previous literature, we find that competitive conditions affect men and women differently: whereas women perform worse under competition than the base-line condition, men do not.

Keywords: Creativity; Competition; Intrinsic motivation; Extrinsic motivation; Choking; Behavioral economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (40)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10683-015-9440-5

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