Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/288835 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Citation: 
[Journal:] Journal of Business Economics [ISSN:] 1861-8928 [Volume:] 90 [Issue:] 8 [Publisher:] Springer [Place:] Berlin, Heidelberg [Year:] 2020 [Pages:] 1253-1284
Publisher: 
Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Abstract: 
Standard economic theory asserts that cash incentives are always better than non-cash ones, or at least not worse. This study employs a real effort experiment to analyze the impact of monetary, non-monetary, and a combination of monetary and non-monetary incentives on performance, where non-monetary incentives are defined as tangible incentives with market value. Our overall results suggest that there exists no significant difference in performance in response to monetary, non-monetary, and mixed incentives. However, gender-based differentiation reveals a different picture: the performances of men and women depend upon the type of incentive used. Whereas men’s performance is significantly higher in response to monetary incentives compared to non-monetary ones, women’s performance is significantly higher in response to non-monetary incentives. The gender differences in the effectiveness of monetary and non-monetary incentives do not seem to be triggered by the perceived attractiveness of the non-monetary incentives but rather by the differences between men and women in the feelings of appreciation and perceived performance pressure in a tournament setting. Therefore, our results indicate that gender differences must be considered when implementing incentives.
Subjects: 
Monetary incentives
Non-monetary incentives
Mixed incentives
Gender differences
Work performance
Experiment
JEL: 
C91
D01
J16
J33
M52
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Article
Document Version: 
Published Version

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