The Multi-Dimensional Effects of Reciprocity on Worker Effort: Evidence from a Hybrid Field-Laboratory Labor Market Experiment

Min-Taec Kim and Robert Slonim
Additional contact information
Min-Taec Kim: University of Sydney

No 6410, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We examine the gift exchange hypothesis on both the quantity and quality of output using a hybrid field-laboratory labor market experiment. We recruited participants to enter survey data for a well-known charitable organization. Workers were paid either a high or low wage. We find that although the total number of surveys entered did not vary with the wage, high wage workers made fewer errors and entered more surveys after controlling for errors. We further find that for low costs associated with errors, offering the low wage maximizes profits, but for higher costs paying the higher "gift exchange" wage maximizes profits.

Keywords: laboratory and field experiments; multi-tasking; reciprocity; gift exchange (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 C93 D03 J33 J41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2012-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp, nep-hrm, nep-lab and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp6410.pdf (application/pdf)

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:iza:izadps:dp6410

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().