Motivating operatives for suicide missions and conventional terrorist attacks

Abstract

We investigate the problem of motivating terrorist operatives for suicide missions and conventional terrorist attacks when operatives have either self-interested or social preferences that are not observable by the terrorist organization. We characterize the screening mechanism for selecting operatives according to their social preferences and determine under what conditions a terrorist group will prefer to utilize suicide versus conventional tactics. For example, when operatives are intrinsically motivated and likely to be represented in the pool of potential recruits, a terrorist organization will be more likely to employ suicide attacks as its sole tactic of choice.