infonet-economy

Non-monetary incentives in the form of awards have so far escaped the attention ofneconomists despite their widespread use. This paper presents an experiment conductednonline at IBM to assess the impact of these kinds of extrinsic incentives. Introducing a hypothetical award has statistically significant effects on stated contributions to a publicngood. Our design allows the estimation of the impact of different award characteristicsnrelated to, for example, how public or how valuable the award is. We illustrate thesenfindings by providing predictions about the behavior induced by a new award at IBM.