Forgoing earned incentives to signal pure motives

Area of Science:

• Behavioral Economics
• Social Psychology

Background:

• Financial incentives are widely used to promote prosocial behaviors like healthy living and conservation.
• However, these incentives can incur self-image costs, as individuals may perceive their actions as less intrinsically motivated.

Purpose of the Study:

• To test an intervention, termed "motivation laundering," designed to mitigate the self-image costs associated with financial incentives.
• To explore whether individuals can retroactively signal intrinsic motivation by forgoing financial rewards.

Main Methods:

• Two preregistered studies were conducted: an online experiment (n=763) on prosocial behavior and a large-scale field experiment (n=17,968) on exercise.
• The intervention involved offering financial rewards to initiate behavior, followed by an option to relinquish earned rewards to enhance self-perception.

Main Results:

• Evidence indicates that emphasizing intrinsic rewards led participants to forgo or donate earned financial rewards.
• The "motivation laundering" intervention successfully allowed individuals to enhance their self-image by signaling they acted for intrinsic reasons.

Conclusions:

• The findings suggest that "motivation laundering" can be a valuable tool for designing incentive systems that encourage behavior change without compromising self-image.
• This approach has significant implications for public policy, organizational management, and behavioral interventions aiming to foster intrinsic motivation.