The Freedom Center and Fall 2022 FC Talks series presents Mary Rigdon, interim director of the University of Arizona Center for the Philosophy of Freedom.
Abstract:
The provision of social incentives in the workplace, where performance benefits a charitable
cause, has been frequently used in modern organizations. In this paper, we quantify the impact of
social incentives on performance under two incentive schemes: piece rate and a winner-take-all
tournament. We introduce social incentives by informing individuals that 50% of their
performance earnings will be donated to a charity of their own choice. Our findings indicate that,
in the presence of social incentives, women increase their performance by approximately 23%
and 27% in the piece rate and tournament payment schemes, respectively. These effects are sizable
and significant. Despite the fact that women also become more confident when social incentives
are used, their willingness to compete is not affected due to their general lack of willingness to
take financial risks.
An electronic version of the paper may be downloaded
- from the SSRN website: www.SSRN.com
- from the RePEc website: www.RePEc.org
- from the CESifo website: https://www.cesifo.org/en/wp
Event Contacts
Kaveh Pourvand
kpourvand@email.arizona.edu
