Deposit? Yes, please! The effect of different modes of assigning reward-and deposit-based financial incentives on effort 301 9 Discussion In this study, we studied the effect of both the assignment mode of incentives, as well as the incentive scheme in an incentivized real-effort task for incentives of different sizes. Two modes of assigning respondents to either reward or depositbased financial incentives are compared: random assignment and ‘nudged’ assignment. In the nudged assignment condition assignment was based on respondent characteristics (discounting, loss aversion and willingness to pay a deposit) allowing opting out. This design allowed us to expand the literature in several directions, discussed below. Random vs. nudged assignment to incentive designs Earlier work has shown that those who have the opportunity to choose their own incentive scheme perform the same or worse than those randomly assigned to incentives.29, 34, 40 The findings of our study are in contrast to that literature, as it appears that respondents allocated more effort and earned slightly more when offered a choice among incentives (after controlling for payment condition). Note that this is just one interpretation of our findings, our results may also be explained by respondents being randomized to incentives performing worse (perhaps because of disappointment with their assignment). A key difference between our study and earlier work is the main dependent variable: in our work effort on a tedious task and in other studies different forms of health behaviour. Hence, whether or not choice among incentive schemes is beneficial may be related to how difficult it is to anticipate what type of incentives will help them stay motivated. In particular, Woerner et al.34 in the context of meditation, find that given the choice between incentive schemes respondents sort into incentives that would theoretically be optimal given their anticipated meditation benefits. Their findings, however suggest that choice has a negative effect on meditation frequency, but only for respondents that did not meditate before the study. This may suggest that choice among incentive schemes is not beneficial when individuals lack the experience needed to anticipate the effort needed and benefits associated with some behaviour. In our case, respondents practice the real-effort task and due to the simple nature of the experiment, the effort needed and benefits associated with completing slider tasks should have been clear. Potentially, choice between incentive schemes is beneficial tasks for which the respondent can easily anticipate effort needed and benefits accrued (i.e., slider tasks) and (potentially) detrimental for complex behaviours (e.g., health
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