Knowledge acquisition or incentive to foster coordination? A real-effort weak-link experiment with craftsmen

Mathieu Lefebvre and Lucie Martin-Bonnel de Longchamp
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Lucie Martin-Bonnel de Longchamp: BETA - Bureau d'Économie Théorique et Appliquée - AgroParisTech - UNISTRA - Université de Strasbourg - Université de Haute-Alsace (UHA) - Université de Haute-Alsace (UHA) Mulhouse - Colmar - UL - Université de Lorraine - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement

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Abstract: This paper presents an artefactual field experiment with craftsmen working on renovation projects to assess the effect of training programs and incentive schemes on coordination. Workers frequently fail to coordinate their tasks when not supervised by a project coordinator. This is particularly important in the construction sector where it leads to a lack of final performance in buildings. We introduce two different incentives: a first contract paying craftsmen only according to their individual performance, and a second contract paying a group of three craftsmen with a weak-link payment according to the group's worst performance. In addition, we test these incentives on two different subject groups: one is composed of craftsmen trained to coordinate their tasks, and the others are not. The results suggest that trained subjects coordinate at significantly higher effort levels than non-trained subjects when facing an individual-based incentive. However, when facing a group-based incentive, non-trained subjects seem to "catch up" trained subjects in terms of coordination level, while these latter subjects do not significantly increase their performance level.

Keywords: Coordination; Real-effort weak-link experiment; Artefactual field experiment; Individual incentive; Group incentive (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-exp
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Published in Journal of Behavioral Economics for Policy, 2022, 6 (S1), pp.93-107

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Journal Article: Knowledge acquisition or incentive to foster coordination? A real-effort weak-link experiment with craftsmen (2022)
Working Paper: Knowledge acquisition or incentive to foster coordination ? A real-effort weak-link experiment with craftsmen (2020)
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