Abstract
This paper constitutes the first economic investigation into the potential detrimental role of smartphones in the workplace based on a field experiment. We exploit the conduct of a nationwide telephone survey, for which interviewers were recruited to work individually and in single offices for half a day. This setting allows to randomly impose bans on the use of interviewers’ personal smartphones during worktime while ruling out information spillovers between treatment conditions. Although the ban was not enforceable, we observe substantial effort increases from banning smartphones in the routine task of calling households, without negative implications linked to perceived employer distrust. Analyzing the number of conducted interviews per interviewer suggests that higher efforts do not necessarily translate into economic benefits for the employer. In our broad discussion of smartphone bans and their potential impact on workplace performance, we consider further outcomes of economic relevance based on data from employee surveys and administrative phone records. Finally, we complement the findings of our field experiment with evidence from a survey experiment and a survey among managers.
Highlights
The prevalence of smartphones has increased rapidly in recent years, notably changing many people’s lives by allowing permanent access to the internet
By running a field experiment among interviewers conducting a telephone survey at a German research institute, we identify the causal effect of a smartphone ban on workplace performance
The difference between C and B is statistically significant at the 5%-level ( p = 0.045 in a two-sided t-test), while the difference between C and Ban + Trust (B+T) is significant at the 1%-level ( p = 0.004 )
Summary
The prevalence of smartphones has increased rapidly in recent years, notably changing many people’s lives by allowing permanent access to the internet. Because such enforcement is hardly possible for personal smartphones that are not under the control of the company, the employer in this case has to rely on a simple request towards the employee to not shirk via his or her own device It remains an open question whether such a soft ban can influence behavior at the workplace. Referring to an idea introduced by Frey (1993), Dickinson and Villeval (2008) show that crowdingout effects are relevant in personal relationships when agents reciprocate a perceived mistrust signal from the principal by lowering effort Summarizing this literature, employer interventions into employee autonomy potentially induce hidden costs, but this seems to depend strongly on the context. Assuming that social norms influence behavior in labor market contexts (see Görges and Nosenzo 2020 for a review), our results shed further light on how employers could benefit from implementing a smartphone ban as a simple request without monitoring or explicitly sanctioning rule violation
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