Please use this form to submit your study for inclusion into our database. It will be checked by a member of the Innovation Growth Lab team, who may be in contact to ask for more information. Your email address * Your name * Title * The name of the study Short summary A brief description of the project's goals and its current state Abstract <p>We report results of a natural field experiment conducted at a medical organization that sought contribution of public goods (i.e., projects for organizational improvement) from its 1200 employees. Offering a prize for winning submissions boosted participation by 85 percent without affecting the quality of the submissions. The effect was consistent across gender and job type. We posit that the allure of a prize, in combination with mission-oriented preferences, drove participation. Using a simple model, we estimate that these preferences explain about a third of the magnitude of the effect. We also find that these results were sensitive to the solicited person’s gender.</p> The full abstract of the study, if available Links https://lish.harvard.edu/publications/incentives-public-goods-inside-organizations-field-experimental-evidence Links to any published papers and related discussions Authors * Affiliations Academic and other institutes that the authors of the study are members of Delivery partner Organisations involved in delivering the trial, if appropriate Year Year Year199419951996199719981999200020012002200320042005200620072008200920102011201220132014201520162017201820192020202120222023202420252026 Month MonthJanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec Day Day12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031 Journal Journal publishing the study, if available Publication stage * Working Paper Published Ongoing Research Forthcoming Discussion Paper Research theme * Entrepreneurship Innovation Business Growth Country Country or countries where this study took place. Topics What sort of topics does the study cover? Sample attributes Hypotheses / research question Are contests an effective incentive mechanism in fostering contributions to innovation public goods inside organizations? Do differing incentive emphasises (monetary and non-monetary) produce different results? Sample Trial population and sample selection Full sample of employees at the partner organisation Number of treatment groups Size of treatment groups Size of control group Unit of analysis Clustered? Yes No Cluster details Trial attributes Treatment description The study used four different incentives in the email solicitation for entries for an innovation contest for workplace improvements within a firm to estimate how to foster contributions. Rounds of data collection Baseline data collection and method None - taken from admin data Data collection method and data collected Evaluation Outcome variables <p>Effect of different incentives on two main outcomes: (a) the decision to submit a proposal and engage in an organizational improvement task and (b) the quality of the submissions measured by over 12,000 peer ratings and about 100 evaluations made by the contest organizers.</p> Results <p>Employees were less likely to participate when solicited with the funding opportunity alone. Small prizes boosted participation without lowering the quality of the submissions.</p> Intervention costs Cost benefit ratio Reference Blasco, A., Jung, O., Lakhani, K.R., Menietti, M. (2017). 'Incentives for Public Goods Inside Organizations: Field Experimental Evidence'. Working paper. Citation for use in academic references
