SMALL REWARDS OR SOME ENCOURAGEMENT? USING AN EXPERIMENT IN CHINA TO TEST EXTRINSIC MOTIVATION ON ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE

Roland Cheo ()
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Roland Cheo: The Center for Economic Research, Shandong University, 27 Shanda Nanlu, Jinan 250100, China

The Singapore Economic Review (SER), 2017, vol. 62, issue 04, 797-808

Abstract: Extrinsic motivation can play a healthy role in influencing student performance, however, in the developing world without outside intervention, the provider of such extrinsic motivation is usually one with limited means, such as the village school teacher, or a parent struggling to make ends meet. Hence, this paper asks the question: Can limited extrinsic motivation affect academic performance? In particular, we look at two types of extrinsic motivation: small rewards and some encouragement and examine which does a better job to motivate students. We find in this study that the promise of a reward leads to improvement in scores during the treatment period, however, encouragement improves student performance in the post-treatment period (during the national primary school leaving examination).

Keywords: Encouragement; rewards; academic performance; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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DOI: 10.1142/S0217590817400276

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