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Contribution Details

Type Working Paper
Scope Discipline-based scholarship
Title Does Pay Motivate Volunteers?
Organization Unit
Authors
  • Bruno Frey
  • Lorenz Goette
Language
  • English
Institution University of Zurich
Series Name Working paper series / Institute for Empirical Research in Economics
Number No. 7
ISSN 1424-0459
Date 1999
Abstract Text Volunteer work is an increasingly large, yet ill-understood sector of the economy. We show that monetary rewards undermine the intrinsic motivation of volunteers. A unique data set from Switzerland allows us to assess the effects of financial rewards on the effort put into volunteer work. There is a fairly standard pattern regarding the volunteers reaction e.g. to more labor market work hours. But we obtain the puzzling result that, when rewarded, volunteers work less. These findings are in line with a large literature in social psychology emphasizing that external rewards can undermine the intrinsic motivation for an activity. We show the implications for public policy towards volunteering.
Official URL http://www.econ.uzh.ch/wp.html
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