CeDEx Seminar - Jana Gallus (UCLA)

The social fabric of work

This talk presents evidence from two field experiments to shed light on the effects of non-monetary incentives and how they interact with the social relational context. The settings are Wikipedia and healthcare. In one case, the non-monetary incentive had positive and long-lasting effects. In the other case, the non-monetary incentive backfired, significantly reducing people’s well-being. The talk ends by presenting an overarching theory to reconcile these findings. It lays out a framework and an agenda for future field experiments on incentives and social relationships, with implications for incentive and platform design.