Are financial incentives related to performance? A meta-analytic review of empirical research.
verifiedrich profile · Journal of Applied Psychology · 1998
Jenkins, G. Douglas; Mitra, Atul; Gupta, Nina; Shaw, Jason D.
How this was studied
A meta-analytic synthesis — it pools many primary studies rather than running a single design, so there is no single-study diagram.
What this article reports
The findings we extracted from this work, normalized into Principia’s relationship form (X → Y). Each feeds the synthesized models below.
financial incentives → performance quantity
financial incentives → task performance
financial incentives → task performance
financial incentives → task performance
Models this article informs
The meta-analytic priors this article contributes evidence to — its place in the broader synthesis.
financial incentives causes task performance
financial incentives predicts performance quantity
financial incentives predicts task performance
pay for performance correlates overall job performance
pay for performance predicts overall job performance
In the authors’ words
The article’s own abstract.
The relationship of financial incentives to performance quality and quantity is cumulated over 39 studies containing 47 relationships. Financial incentives were not related to performance quality but had a corrected correlation of .34 with performance quantity. Setting (laboratory, field, experimental simulation) and theoretical framework moderated the relationship, but task type did not.
What the literature says about it
Attributed, open-access quotes from other works that cite this article, plus the citation-graph verdict tally. Corroborations and disputes, in one place — the honest-broker view.
supports “On the one hand, some research works suggest that incentives improve performance in a variety of scenarios (e.g. better performance at the workplace [37], less biased online reviews [38], improvement in certain probabilistic reasoning tasks [35], improved accuracy in rapid stimulus categorization…”
supports “Indeed, Indeed, according to Jenkins et al. [75], the relationship between financial incentives and performance is weakest in laboratory experiments. according to Jenkins et al. [75], the relationship between financial incentives and performance is weakest in laboratory experiments.”
supports “Indeed, Indeed, according to Jenkins et al. [75], the relationship between financial incentives and performance is weakest in laboratory experiments. according to Jenkins et al. [75], the relationship between financial incentives and performance is weakest in laboratory experiments.”
supports “Jenkins et al. (1998) also found that short-term economic incentives may positively affect quantity but not quality of performance.”
supports “On the one hand, some research works suggest that incentives improve performance in a variety of scenarios (e.g. better performance at the workplace [37], less biased online reviews [38], improvement in certain probabilistic reasoning tasks [35], improved accuracy in rapid stimulus categorization…”
supports “Jenkins et al. (1998) also found that short-term economic incentives may positively affect quantity but not quality of performance.”
supports “Monetary incentives are typically used in the real world as a mechanism to maximize performance by creating an extrinsic motivation for subjects [41].”
supports “Monetary incentives are typically used in the real world as a mechanism to maximize performance by creating an extrinsic motivation for subjects [41].”
Ancillary research
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