Honors: A rational choice analysis of award bestowals

Bruno Frey and Jana Gallus
Additional contact information
Jana Gallus: Harvard University, USA

Rationality and Society, 2016, vol. 28, issue 3, 255-269

Abstract: Principals bestow awards in different forms, such as orders, medals, decorations, badges, prizes, or titles. Our contribution focuses on the givers’ side of award bestowals and analyzes the distinct purposes that such bestowals serve. Awards have the potential to raise their recipients’ intrinsic motivation, while money is more likely to crowd it out. Awards establish special ties of loyalty between the givers and recipients. The threat of withdrawal by the givers, and rejection by recipients, serves as a mutual control mechanism on future behavior. Givers may bask in the reflected glory of well-known personalities whom they honor. They may exploit the expressive function of awards and signal to agents and the public what kind of attitude and behavior they value.

Keywords: Awards; honors; loyalty; motivation; principal-agent framework; signaling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1043463116634656 (text/html)

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:sae:ratsoc:v:28:y:2016:i:3:p:255-269

DOI: 10.1177/1043463116634656

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Rationality and Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().