Econ Papers Daily / 期刊论文
志存高远还是稳中求进？承诺、亲社会激励与目标设定
Aim high or play safe? Commitment, prosocial incentives, and goal setting
摘要
We examine how behavioral incentives affect goal setting and performance when individuals choose their own goals. Using a model with reference-dependent preferences and effort cost uncertainty, we predict that commitment mechanisms improve performance by inducing more conservative goal selection to increase goal attainability, whereas prosocial incentives enhance performance by increasing motivation. Two experiments confirm these predictions. In an online real-effort task, soft commitment reduced goals relative to controls but significantly increased performance, whereas prosocial incentives, in the form of charitable donations contingent on goal achievement, preserved goal ambition and improved performance without lowering goals. A four-week field experiment in which students set daily exercise goals yields similar results: commitment lowered goals while increasing performance, whereas prosocial incentives maintained ambitious goals and improved outcomes. These effects persisted throughout the experiment. These findings highlight that, under effort cost uncertainty, commitment and prosocial incentives improve performance through distinct mechanisms.
中文摘要
我们考察当个体自行选择目标时，行为激励如何影响目标设定与绩效。利用一个具有参照依赖偏好和努力成本不确定性的模型，我们预测：承诺机制通过诱导更保守的目标选择以提高目标可实现性来改善绩效，而亲社会激励则通过增强动机来提升绩效。两项实验证实了这些预测。在一项在线真实努力任务中，相较于控制组，软承诺降低了目标，但显著提高了绩效；而以与目标达成挂钩的慈善捐赠形式提供的亲社会激励，则保持了目标雄心，并在不降低目标的情况下改善了绩效。一项为期四周、让学生设定每日锻炼目标的实地实验得到了类似结果：承诺降低了目标，同时提高了绩效；而亲社会激励则维持了雄心勃勃的目标并改善了结果。这些效应在整个实验期间持续存在。这些发现凸显出，在努力成本不确定性下，承诺与亲社会激励通过不同机制改善绩效。