Logo image
How social preferences provide effort incentives in situations of financial support
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

How social preferences provide effort incentives in situations of financial support

Christian Knoller, Stefan Neuß and Richard Peter
PloS one, Vol.16(1), pp.e0244972-e0244972
2021
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0244972
PMCID: PMC7842880
PMID: 33507931
url
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0244972View
Published (Version of record) Open Access

Abstract

When people anticipate financial support, they may reduce preventive effort. We conjecture that the source of financial support can mitigate this moral hazard effect due to social preferences. We compare effort choices when another individual voluntarily provides financial support against effort choices under purely monetary incentives. When financial support is provided voluntarily by another individual, we expect recipients to exert more effort to avoid bad outcomes (level effect) and to reduce effort provision to a lesser degree as financial support becomes more generous (sensitivity effect). We conducted an incentivized laboratory experiment and find some evidence for the level effect and strong evidence for the sensitivity effect. This leads to significant gains in material efficiency with expected wealth being 5.5% higher and 37.3% less volatile.
Altruism Financial Support Humans Models, Theoretical Motivation Probability Risk-Taking Social Behavior

Details

Metrics

8 Record Views
Logo image