Using two experiments, I examine the effects of relative performance information (RPI) on social bonding and subsequent cooperation. In Experiment 1, participants in groups of four first complete a more or less difficult individual math task and then participate in a public goods game. I find that RPI significantly increases contributions in the public goods game when group members exhibit similar performance levels in the individual task and when the task is more difficult. Conceptually, RPI in such a setting fosters social bonds by revealing a common challenge shared by group members. In scenario‐based Experiment 2, with performance level held constant, RPI strengthens social bonds when peers similarly miss a difficult target but not when they similarly surpass an easy target. Additionally, the inclusion of ranking information in RPI negatively impacts social bonding, regardless of target difficulty. While prior research predominantly examines RPI through the lens of social comparison, this study illustrates the conditions under which RPI can also foster social bonds and enhance subsequent cooperation.

We experimentally examine how nonprofit pay levels affect nonprofit managers' misreporting and how different types of penalties deter such behavior. Absent any penalties for misreporting, we find similar levels of, but different mechanisms for, misreporting by managers who select into lower- versus higher-paying nonprofits. Specifically, lower-paying nonprofits attract mission-focused managers who misreport to advance their nonprofit's mission and justify doing so by their personal sacrifice of wealth, whereas higher-paying nonprofits attract a majority of self-focused managers who justify misreporting by focusing on their personal outcomes. Because managers who select into their nonprofit at different pay levels have different motivation and justification for misreporting, we predict and find that penalizing the nonprofit is more effective in deterring misreporting in lower-paying nonprofits, while penalizing the manager is more effective in higher-paying nonprofits. Our study contributes to theory on the behavioral drivers of nonprofit misreporting and informs practice of ways to deter it.

We design three experiments to examine how group incentives moderate the motivational effects of cash versus tangible rewards. Our first experiment shows that, relative to individual incentives, group incentives can magnify any negative effect of the uncertain attractiveness of a less‐fungible tangible reward (versus cash), as group members must evaluate not only how attractive they find the reward themselves but also how attractive other group members are likely to find it. However, as we show in our second experiment, under group incentives, structuring a tangible reward as a shared experience among group members who like each other can mitigate any demotivating effect of an individually consumed tangible reward vis‐à‐vis a cash reward. A third experiment provides process support for our theory, showing that both the attractiveness of the reward and the degree of certainty that others will also find it attractive jointly and fully mediate our findings. As a whole, our study furthers an understanding of the multifaceted dimensions of tangible rewards, identifying incremental effects that can arise when tangible rewards are combined with group incentives.

To address the empirical phenomenon that organizations often reward time on the job as an end in itself, we design an experiment in which participants solve anagram puzzles, manipulating whether a compensation pool generated from the output of paired workers is allocated based on the individual inputs of relative time spent or on the individual outputs of puzzles solved. Relative to an output-based allocation, we find that an input-based allocation leads participants to spend more time on the task. However, when paired participants have widely different abilities, an input-based allocation also leads to less effort intensity, defined as puzzles solved per unit of time spent. We attribute these findings to fairness considerations, an interpretation we corroborate in a second experiment with purely individual incentives that finds the same effort duration advantage of input-based pay, but no offsetting disadvantage in effort intensity.