This website uses cookies.

By clicking the "Accept" button or continuing to browse our site, you agree to first-party and session-only cookies being stored on your device to enhance site navigation and analyze site performance and traffic. For more information on our use of cookies, please see our Privacy Policy.

  1. Home
  2. Journals
  3. Journal of Economic Literature
  4. June 2012
  5. Economic Incentives and Social Preferences: Substitutes or Complements?

Economic Incentives and Social Preferences: Substitutes or Complements?

Download Full Text PDF

Abstract

Explicit economic incentives designed to increase contributions to public goods and to promote other pro-social behavior sometimes are counterproductive or less effective than would be predicted among entirely self-interested individuals. This may occur when incentives adversely affect individuals' altruism, ethical norms, intrinsic motives to serve the public, and other social preferences. The opposite also occurs—crowding in—though it appears less commonly. In the fifty experiments that we survey, these effects are common, so that incentives and social preferences may be either substitutes (crowding out) or complements (crowding in). We provide evidence for four mechanisms that may account for these incentive effects on preferences: namely that incentives may (i) provide information about the person who implemented the incentive, (ii) frame the decision situation so as to suggest appropriate behavior, (iii) compromise a control averse individual's sense of autonomy, and (iv) affect the process by which people learn new preferences. An implication is that the evaluation of public policy must be restricted to allocations that are supportable as Nash equilibria when account is taken of these crowding effects. We show that well designed fines, subsidies, and the like minimize crowding out and may even do the opposite, making incentives and social preferences complements rather than substitutes. (JEL D02, D03, D04, D83, E61, H41, Z13)

Citation

Bowles, Samuel, and Sandra Polania-Reyes. 2012. "Economic Incentives and Social Preferences: Substitutes or Complements?" Journal of Economic Literature, 50 (2): 368-425. DOI: 10.1257/jel.50.2.368

JEL Classification

  • D02 Institutions: Design, Formation, and Operations
  • D91 Micro-Based Behavioral Economics: Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
  • D04 Microeconomic Policy: Formulation; Implementation; Evaluation
  • D83 Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief
  • E61 Policy Objectives; Policy Designs and Consistency; Policy Coordination
  • H41 Public Goods
  • Z13 Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Social and Economic Stratification