Motivation crowding theory
These findings led to popular calls for the adoption of incentives as motivational tools in a variety of professional and educational contexts.
[8] A wide range of behaviors has been investigated for crowding out, including completion of rote tasks, engagement with interesting puzzles, pro-social favors, creative art projects, and more.
[10] First, task-noncontingent rewards, such as show-up fees, are offered to subjects independent of task performance or completion, simply as compensation for their time.
Second, task-contingent rewards, on the other hand, are incentives on the quantity, quality, or completion of some specific behavior (e.g. solving word puzzles or collecting charitable donations).
This research considered the effect of monetary,[11] tangible (e.g. gifts), and symbolic rewards[12] among young children,[13] college students, and adults[14] doing a wide variety of tasks.
[15] In a classic study, Deci paid all subjects for participation in a psychological experiment that involved solving multiple puzzles or IQ test questions.
For instance, economic studies have shown that increasing penalties can actually lower obedience with the law and decrease worker performance.
[18][19] While all of these early investigations demonstrated that providing extrinsic incentives could undermine motivation for the rewarded behavior, researchers had not yet established the psychological process involved that could explain this consistent pattern of results.
On this account, then, the extent to which a given extrinsic incentive crowds out motivation is determined by the balance of the controlling versus status-signaling nature of the awards as perceived by the actor.
[20][8] The application of self-perception theory to motivation suggests that people sometimes form post-behavior judgments about the causes of their actions by considering the external circumstances of their decision.
[24][25] Additionally, the presence or absence of extrinsic incentives can be interpreted by observers as signals of an agent's motivations for engaging in some activity.
[26] To the extent that agents are concerned with cultivating an image as an altruist, the presence of extrinsic incentives can lower interest in engaging in some task that might signal non-altruistic motives.
[12] Compatible with these findings are studies showing that the effect of crowding out is greater in the case when extrinsic incentives are known publicly compared to when they are known only to the actor but not to observers.
Other meta-analyses have concluded that, once these factors are properly controlled for, motivation crowding for certain behaviors is a robust effect for certain kinds of rewards.
The basic phenomenon of incentives undermining motivation, effort, and output has been demonstrated in populations of children, college students, adults, and workers, both in the lab and in the field.
[10][37][38] The collection of this evidence has led some economists to call for rethinking how governments and charitable organizations that rely on volunteers use incentives and pay-for-performance schemes.
