Crowding Out in the Labor Market: A Prosocial Setting Is Necessary
通过数据录入工人的田野实验，发现货币奖励对劳动参与的挤出效应取决于任务框架：在亲社会框架下小额奖励降低参与率，而在工作框架下参与率随工资非递减；且正工资显著提高工作量。
Recent studies, mostly from prosocial settings, suggest that monetary rewards may crowd out effort exertion by economic agents. We design a field experiment with data entry workers to investigate the extent of such crowding-out effects in a labor market. Using simple variations in the job description of a task, we induce a natural work setting under the work frame and emphasize social preference under the social frame. We find that crowding out of labor participation critically depends on framing—whereas small monetary rewards reduce the participation rate under the social frame, the participation rate is nondecreasing in the wage rate under the work frame. Moreover, among the workers who participate in the task, those who receive a positive wage perform a considerably higher amount of work than those who are paid zero wage under either frame. Thus, there is weak evidence of crowding out only when the task is explicitly given a prosocial flavor and not under a regular work setting. Furthermore, emphasizing social preference in the labor market in such a way reduces the overall labor supply and seems to have an adverse effect on the quality of work. Data, as supplemental material, are available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2013.1807 . This paper was accepted by John List, behavioral economics.