An Evaluation of Magnitude in Monetary Incentives

ABSTRACT

The present studies were conducted to determine effective magnitudes of incentives for administrative employees. In study 1, five employees were exposed first to a baseline condition where no incentives were available for completing a filing task. Then, each participant was exposed to a magnitude evaluation condition where work completed in each session resulted in a systematically decreasing amount of money earned until the employees declined to continue responding. Results of the first study suggested that participants did not reliably meet filing goals when offered less than $2.11. The results of study 1 were then used to inform a second study that used a multiple baseline across participants design to evaluate the effects of an incentive condition in which $2.11 was available for meeting goals set at 20% above mean baseline responding. Results indicated that $2.11 consistently increased responding relative to a non-incentive baseline.

KEYWORDS:

• Incentive characteristics
• incentives
• magnitude

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).