Piece-Rate Incentives and Idea Generation – An Experimental Analysis

Katharina Laske, Nathalie Römer and Marina Schröder

No 11594, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: We introduce the word illustration task (WIT), a novel experimental task to quantify performance in an idea generation context. Between treatments, we vary whether or not piece-rate (PR) incentives are implemented and the degree to which these incentives are aligned with the desirable outcome. We show that PR incentives have a positive impact on the number of innovative ideas, i.e., the number of ideas that are of high quality and original. We find that unweighted PR incentives (PR provided for any idea) perform at least as well as more aligned weighted PR incentives that are additionally contingent on the quality and/or originality of ideas. Our results suggest that when it comes to fostering idea generation, it is sufficient to incentivize trying instead of incentivizing succeeding.

Keywords: idea generation; real-effort experiment; incentives; creativity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C90 J33 M52 O31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-hrm and nep-lma
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