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American Economic Review Vol. 99 No. 1 2009

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

Dan Ariely1; Anat Bracha2; Stephan Meier3

1 The Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, 1 Towerview Drive, Durham, NC 27708. · 2 The Eitan Berglas School of Economics, Tel Aviv University, POB 39040, Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel. · 3 Graduate School of Business, Columbia University, 710 Uris Hall, 3022 Broadway, New York, NY 10027.

Abstract

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.

DOI
10.1257/aer.99.1.544
Volume
99
Issue
1
Pages
544-555
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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