Blasco A, Jung OS, Lakhani KR.
Motivating Effort in Contributing To Public Goods Inside Organizations: Field Experimental Evidence. Working Paper.
Publisher's VersionAbstractWe investigate the factors driving workers’ decisions to generate public goods inside an organization through a randomized solicitation of workplace improvement proposals in a medical center with 1200 employees. We find that pecuniary incentives, such as winning a prize, generate a threefold increase in participation compared to non-pecuniary incentives alone, such as prestige or recognition. Participation is also increased by a solicitation appealing to improving the workplace. However, emphasizing the patient mission of the organization led to countervailing effects on participation. Overall, these results are consistent with workers having multiple underlying motivations to contribute to public goods inside the organization consisting of a combination of pecuniary and altruistic incentives associated with the mission of the organization.
blasco_-_motivating_effort_etc.pdf Menietti M.
Fundraising Goals. Working Paper.
AbstractWhen beginning a new project charities typically appeal to donors with a fundraising goal and a description of the project. For example, an organization may announce a \$200 million campaign to construct a new hospital. While goals are commonly used by fundraisers, there is little theoretical understanding of why they should be successful. We argue that the success of goals may result from provision being more certain at the goal level. The goal induces a threshold like effect on the donors generating a subgame perfect equilibrium with larger total donations than the equivalent game without a goal. Experimental data suggests that announcing a goal does benefit fundraisers. Reducing the uncertainty at the goal does not further increase contributions to fundraisers, but does benefit donors. Simulations of large economies indicate the effect on the size of donations can be quite large, substantially increasing donations while simultaneously enlarging the set of contributors.