Incentivizing Creativity: A Large-Scale Experiment with Tournaments and Gifts

Christiane Bradler, Susanne Neckermann and Arne Warnke
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Christiane Bradler: ZEW Centre for European Economic Research, Mannheim, Germany

No 16-035/VII, Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers from Tinbergen Institute

Abstract: This paper reports the results from a large-scale laboratory experiment investigating the impact of tournament incentives and wage gifts on creativity. We find that tournaments substantially increase creative output, with no evidence for crowding out of intrinsic motivation. By comparison, wage gifts are ineffective. Additional treatments show that it is the uncertain mapping between effort and output that inhibits reciprocity. This uncertainty is prevalent in creative and other complex tasks. Our findings provide a rationale for the frequent use of tournaments when seeking to motivate creative output.

Keywords: creativity; incentives; tournament; reciprocity; experiment; crowding-out (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D03 J33 M52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-05-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-cul, nep-exp, nep-hrm, nep-pr~ and nep-lma
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tin:wpaper:20160035

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