Spillovers from targeting of incentives: Exploring responses to being excluded

• A growing set of policies involve transfers conditioned upon socially desired actions, such as attending school or conserving forest. However, given a desire to maximize the impact of limited funds by avoiding transfers that do not change behavior, typically some potential recipients are excluded on the basis of their characteristics, their actions or at random. This paper uses a laboratory experiment to study the behavior of individuals excluded on different bases from a new incentive that encourages real monetary donations to a public environmental conservation program. We show that the donations from the individuals who were excluded based on prior high contributions fell significantly. Yet the rationale used for exclusion mattered, in that none of the other selection criteria used as the basis for exclusion resulted in negative effects on contributions. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Nationalekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Economics (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Monetary incentives

Targeting

Spillovers

Economic experiments

Behavioral economics

intrinsic motivation

charitable contributions

field experiment

fairness

cooperation

behavior

reciprocity

competition

subsidies

offers

Business & Economics

Psychology

raub pg

1995

journal of economic behavior & organization

v27

p345

rsythe r

1994

games and economic behavior

v6

p347

Behavioral economics

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)