Comment by Chris2048

5 years ago

That quote might be misleading:

"Volunteer work is an increasingly large, yet ill-understood sector of the economy. We show that monetary rewards undermine the intrinsic motivation of volunteers."

-- https://ideas.repec.org/p/zur/iewwpx/007.html

The earlier sentence make it clear they are talking about monetary rewards specifically, not any kind of reward. A t-shirt might notionally have a $ value, but it is not a monetary reward. Plus, the nature of a branded t-shirt has an obvious team-participation / prestige value.

If rewards demotivate people, we should also avoid positive recognition, or praise, which is a form of reward; of course this is unintuitive, so I assume monetary rewards are a special case.

It is tricky.

We all hear the stories of the person who saves a company a million dollars, and then gets giving a coffee cup (or an attaboy) for recognition.

It gets even trickier when the giver and the receiver have wildly different incomes.

Generally I find money to be a terrible proxy for what I actually value, but other options are worse proxies!