Adverse effects of control? Evidence from a field experiment

Holger Herz () and Christian Zihlmann ()
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Holger Herz: University of Fribourg
Christian Zihlmann: University of Fribourg

Experimental Economics, 2024, vol. 27, issue 2, No 7, 469-488

Abstract: Abstract We conduct a field experiment with Amazon Mechanical Turk (“AMT”) workers to causally assess the effect of introducing a control mechanism in an existing work relationship on workers’ performance on tasks of varying difficulty. We find that introducing control significantly reduces performance. This reduction occurs primarily on challenging tasks, while performance on simple tasks is unaffected. The negative effects are primarily driven by workers who exhibit non-pecuniary motivation in the absence of control. Our results show that there are adverse effects of control, and they suggest that these adverse effects are of particular concern to firms that rely on high performance on challenging tasks.

Keywords: Control; Remote work; Experiment; Crowding out (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D21 J24 M5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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DOI: 10.1007/s10683-024-09823-3

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