Doing Good or Doing Well? Image Motivation and Monetary Incentives in Behaving Prosocially

By Dan Ariely, Anat Bracha, Stephan Meier. Social Science Research Network, 2009

1,826 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper experimentally examines image motivation--the desire to be liked and well regarded by others--as a driver in prosocial behavior (doing good), and asks whether extrinsic monetary incentives (doing well) have a detrimental effect on prosocial behavior due to crowding out of image motivation. Using the unique property of image motivation--its dependency on visibility--we show that image is indeed an important part of the motivation to behave prosocially, and that extrinsic incentives crowd out image motivation. Therefore, monetary incentives are more likely to be counterproductive for public prosocial activities than for private ones. (JEL D64, L31, Z13)

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, General Decision Sciences, Safety Research

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f1c39f1e4e6f7588dca322cf1f628fc264365853

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Citations in the corpus

Leadership and the voluntary provision of public goods: Field evidence from Bolivia (2015, background): “See, for example, Harbaugh (1998), Ariely et al. (2009) and Karlan and McConnell (2014).”
Hey Look at Me: The Effect of Giving Circles on Giving (2014, neutral): “[3] Ariely, D.”
Does Economic Freedom Foster Tolerance (2013, neutral): “(d) Markets tend to rely on material motivation, which may crowd out intrinsic motivation and altruism (see, e.g., Ariely et al. 2009).”
No Margin, no Mission? A Field Experiment on Incentives for public service delivery (2014, background): “These findings contribute to a body of laboratory and field experiments on charitable giving (Ariely et al., 2009; Gneezy and Rustichini, 2000; Lacetera et al., 2011; Mellström and Johannesson, 2008) that test whether financial rewards crowd-out other sources of motivation.”
The Braggart's Dilemma: On the Social Rewards and Penalties of Advertising Prosocial Behavior (2015, background): “To appear pure, prosocial actors will actively eschew selfish benefits, emphasize their sacrifice, or even subject themselves to personal suffering (Ariely, Bracha, and Meier 2009; Gneezy et al. 2010; Olivola and Shafir 2013).”
On the Norms of Charitable Giving in Islam: A Field Experiment (2012, background): “The advantage of faith based extrinsic rewards and its conditional nature that the rewards are only given when anonymous effectively help to overcome the potential crowding out effects as described in Janssen and Mendys-Kamphorst (2004) or Ariely et al. (2009). However, there are other theoretical c”
Saving more in groups: Field experimental evidence from Chile (2018, background): “, Bernheim (1994) and for image motivation, see Benabou and Tirole (2006); Ariely et al. (2009). (25)See Appendix B for the wording of the screening questions.”
Research, part of a Special Feature on Compensation and Reward for Environmental Services in the Tropics Principles for Fairness and Efficiency in Enhancing Environmental Services in Asia: Payments, Compensation, or Co-Investment? (2010, background): “Image motivation, the desire to be liked and well-regarded by others, as a driver in prosocial behavior (doing good) is crowded out by extrinsic monetary incentives (doing well) (Ariely et al. 2009).”
The Power of Shame and the Rationality of Trust (2007, background): “Audience effects play prominently in the results of Andreoni and Bernheim (2009), and in Ariely et al. (2009) who interact these effects with material rewards.”
The Effort Paradox: Effort Is Both Costly and Valued (2018, background): “While people sometimes do this to signal something about their character [117], they also do it for the pleasure that effort affords [25,26].”