Level Of Incentives Research Articles

Physician Performance Pay: Experimental Evidence

We present causal evidence on the effect of performance pay on health care provision, from a behavioral experiment with a representative sample of German primary care physicians. Randomly assigning physicians to two performance incentive levels, we analyze how performance pay, compared to capitation (within-subjects) and the bonus level (between-subjects), affects health care service provision and the quality of care. We find that performance pay reduces underprovision of care prevalent under capitation and enhances the quality of care. The effect increases with the patients’ severity of illness. Also, small incentives were effective in enhancing the quality of care. Linking behavioral data to physician register data indicates that physicians’ practice characteristics significantly relate health care choices in the experiment. Physicians in high-profit practices and practicing in cities are most responsive to incentives. Health policy implications are discussed.

The Impact of Varying Financial Incentives on Data Quality in Web Panel Surveys

Abstract This study assesses whether varying contingent financial incentives in a web panel survey altered respondent behavior. A sample of US web panel participants were randomly assigned to cash incentive levels ranging from $0.50 to $3.00 awarded upon completion of an online survey gauging preferences for fresh strawberries. The analytical results indicate that increased contingent incentives had no clear association with the eligibility or break-off rates. Increased incentives reduced the incidence of trap question failure among a subset of qualified respondents. Responses of respondents flagged as unqualified to complete the survey, or qualified but inattentive, consistently differed from other qualified respondents on many survey items over a range of incentive levels. Overall, the results suggest increased contingent incentives yield limited improvements in the behavior of web panel respondents.

Formal versus informal institutions: Extraction and earnings in framed field experiments with small-scale fishing communities in Turkey

Although many formal and informal mechanisms have been proposed to avoid over-fishing, their relative effectiveness is relatively understudied. This paper investigates fisher behaviour subject to formal and informal institutions in an experimental field setting. Framed field experiments were conducted with 240 fishers to assess cooperation and compare the effectiveness of formal and informal institutions for small-scale fishers in Turkey. Turkish fisheries is characterized mainly as open-access, subject to immense competition between industrial, small-scale and recreational fishers, even though formal measures such as closed seasons and areas are prevalent. Extraction and earnings were measured under two formal institutions (monetary penalty versus purchase of fishing rights for every unit of catch beyond the quota) and were compared to an informal mechanism involving communication as well as a baseline representing open-access. While monetary penalty was effective to reduce extraction relative to baseline (open-access), the other formal institution, purchase of fishing rights, did not significantly reduce extraction, even though providing the same level of economic incentive. Communication was the most effective to increase earnings and improve income equality. This result supports the argument that community-based institutions and co-management in fisheries management (entailing communication) can improve sustainable resource use and livelihoods of small-scale fishers in developing countries. The results suggest that differently framed economic incentives may lead to differential outcomes in terms of cooperation, earnings and income distribution. These findings contribute to fisheries management in addressing unintended fisher behaviour, as well as to other sustainability policies in dealing with resource use conflicts in general.

Assessing smallholder preferences for incentivised climate-smart agriculture using a discrete choice experiment

The promotion of climate smart agriculture (CSA) techniques to increase farmer resilience against climate change and improve their livelihoods is high on the international development agenda and aims to help achieve Sustainable Development Goals of food security (SDG 2), climate resilience and mitigation (SDG 13). We present the results of a discrete choice experiment (DCE) conducted in face-to-face interviews. In a study in Malawi, farmers responded to a series of questions about different cropping techniques and tree planting options to improve soil fertility and climate change resilience. A combination of financial and non-financial incentives was proposed to increase adoption and success rates. The results show that for different policy objectives, different climate smart packages are suitable. Our results demonstrate that farmers prefer options that secure the production of maize and include crops with both domestic use and local markets. The drought-resistant crop sorghum was unpopular among respondents; achieving SDG 13 through this CSA approach would therefore require high incentive payments. If CSA is to help achieve multiple goals e.g. poverty and inequality reduction (SDGs 1 and 10) as well as SDGs 2 and 13, a range of CSA packages, with different types of crops, rotation versus intercropping techniques and incentive levels, should be offered to smallholders.

Analytical and forecasting study for wastewater treatment and water resources in Saudi Arabia

Water treatment is a strategic solution to resolve the water shortage in agriculture and industrial sectors in Saudi Arabia. Rainfall which is not a reliable water source varies from 50 mm in most of the country to 500 mm per year in the southwest region. Lack of incentive and poor water treatment level were the main challenges in the water treatment industry. The water consumption in 2018; around 3360 million m3, was almost 70% higher than it was in 2007. Similarly, the total municipal wastewater increased steadily and it is predicted to rise dramatically between 2025 and 2050 to reach 5090 million m3. Treated water rose by nearly 200 % between 2007 and 2018 and is expected to grow annually by 4% between 2025 to 2050.

A Multi-Agent Social Gamification Model to Guide Sustainable Urban Photovoltaic Panels Installation Policies

The paper presents a holistic and quantitative model of social gamification in a smart city, which is likely to stimulate the photovoltaic panels installation. The coupling of multi-agent systems, GIS tools, demographic data, and a spatial knowledge base made it possible to develop and calibrate a computable model of social interaction in a “model smart city,” as well as to quantitatively evaluate the deployment of photovoltaic panels. It also enabled the analysis of factors affecting the efficiency of this process, e.g., the photovoltaic potential of solar roofs, the ownership of buildings, the type of building development, the level of social trust, institutional and social incentives, and the development of an information society. The devised model is tested on the city of Warsaw, utilizing spatial and descriptive data provided by city authorities.

Salaried and voluntary community health workers: exploring how incentives and expectation gaps influence motivation

BackgroundThe recent publication of the WHO guideline on support to optimise community health worker (CHW) programmes illustrates the renewed attention for the need to strengthen the performance of CHWs. Performance partly depends on motivation, which in turn is influenced by incentives. This paper aims to critically analyse the use of incentives and their link with improving CHW motivation.MethodsWe undertook a comparative analysis on the linkages between incentives and motivation based on existing datasets of qualitative studies in six countries. These studies had used a conceptual framework on factors influencing CHW performance, where motivational factors were defined as financial, material, non-material and intrinsic and had undertaken semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with CHWs, supervisors, health managers and selected community members.ResultsWe found that (a mix of) incentives influence motivation in a similar and sometimes different way across contexts. The mode of CHW engagement (employed vs. volunteering) influenced how various forms of incentives affect each other as well as motivation. Motivation was negatively influenced by incentive-related “expectation gaps”, including lower than expected financial incentives, later than expected payments, fewer than expected material incentives and job enablers, and unequally distributed incentives across groups of CHWs. Furthermore, we found that incentives could cause friction for the interface role of CHWs between communities and the health sector.ConclusionsWhether CHWs are employed or engaged as volunteers has implications for the way incentives influence motivation. Intrinsic motivational factors are important to and experienced by both types of CHWs, yet for many salaried CHWs, they do not compensate for the demotivation derived from the perceived low level of financial reward. Overall, introducing and/or sustaining a form of financial incentive seems key towards strengthening CHW motivation. Adequate expectation management regarding financial and material incentives is essential to prevent frustration about expectation gaps or “broken promises”, which negatively affect motivation. Consistently receiving the type and amount of incentives promised appears as important to sustain motivation as raising the absolute level of incentives.

Trait anxiety on effort allocation to monetary incentives: a behavioral and high-density EEG study

Trait anxiety is an important phenotype in the prediction of stress-induced neuropsychiatric disorders. While the role of trait anxiety in mental effort and cognitive impairment is well documented, much less is known about its influence on motivated behaviors and physical effort. Here, we investigated trait anxiety-related differences in behavioral and neural responses in an effort-related monetary incentive delay task. Participants prompted with different incentive levels could exert handgrip responses to earn monetary rewards while a 256-channel electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded. Participants’ performance was linearly dependent on incentive level, with higher stakes prompting better accuracy and higher grip force. Importantly, we found a striking association between trait anxiety and incentive-related grip force; effort exertion was related to incentive level only in high-anxious individuals. In analyses of neural efficiency associated with effort preparation involving Contingent-negative variation (CNV), we found that the CNV amplitude was sensitive to monetary incentive levels. Source imaging analyses of CNV indicated increased activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) for the highest incentive level. Importantly, we found a significant interaction between trait anxiety and incentive level on CNV modulation at the interval ranging from −2610 to −2510 ms, with greater CNV responses to the lower monetary incentive sizes in high anxiety. Subsequent mediation analyses supported a mediation of the ACC activation on the association between trait anxiety and incentive-selective grip force. Our study reveals a role for ACC in trait anxiety-related differences on incentive processing, when rewards are dependent on effortful performance.

The Relationship Between Relational Quality and Megaproject Success: The Moderating Role of Incentives

To improve the success rate of megaprojects from a relational perspective, we analyzed the factors that affect relational quality in megaprojects and the impact of relational quality on megaproject success. Based on survey data from 172 respondents, partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to test the proposed structural model. The results show that in the case of low-level incentives, asset specificity and uncertainty have a negative impact on relational quality. Further, goodwill-based trust, competence-based trust and dependence have a positive effect on relational quality. However, in the case of high-level incentives, the negative impact of uncertainty on relational quality disappears, and the effect of asset specificity on relational quality becomes positive. In addition, this study validates the role of relational quality in promoting megaproject success; surprisingly, the moderating role of incentive level is not significant. These findings can help project managers improve megaproject success with the relational method and provide an inspiration for engineering managers to re-evaluate the effectiveness of incentives.

Greenhouse gas abatement strategies and costs in French dairy production

Abstract The French dairy sector—like the rest of the economy—has to address the challenge of mitigating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to curb climate change. Deciding the economically optimal mitigation level and mix of abatement strategies requires knowledge on the cost of reducing GHG emissions. Agricultural bio-economic models can help identify which production-system changes are needed to reduce GHG emissions at different levels of incentives at minimal cost. The results reflect the model structure and parameter set, especially for GHG emissions accounting. Here abatement strategies and related costs for several levels of tax on GHG emissions in French dairy production are compared using four bio-economic models: the three supply models AROPAj, ORFEE and FARMDYN and the global partial equilibrium model GLOBIOM. It is found that between 1% and 6% GHG emissions abatement can be achieved at the current price of the EU allowances without substantially reducing milk production or outsourcing input production such as feed or herd renewal. Cost estimates reflect the planning horizon: mitigation is more expensive when past investments are not amortized. Models that account for demand-side factors show that a carbon tax has potential negative impacts on consumers through higher milk prices, while these price increases partly offset the reductionsin farm income. Model results suggest that promising on-farm GHG emissions abatement strategies include measures that let animals reach their full production potential and moderately intensive land management.

Incorporating car owner preferences for the introduction of economic incentives for speed limit enforcement

Human error including driving misbehavior contributes to over 90 percent of road vehicle accidents, and speeding is considered to be risky. Smart technologies, such as Connected Vehicle System (CVS) are among the interesting technical options to improve driving behavior, and Pay-As-You-Speed (PAYS) is an effective economic incentive to reduce speed violations. We investigated the acceptability of CVS with and without the presence of economic incentives, such as PAYS, in the context of a middle-income country: Iran. We used a Zero-Inflated Ordered Probit model (ZIOP) to estimate drivers’ willingness to pay for a CVS, and a hazard-based model for predicting the incentive level needed for accepting CVS via a PAYS scheme. ZIOP model indicated that drivers with the following characteristics were more likely to pay more for CVS: having a comprehensive insurance coverage, being younger than 60 years, owning more than one car, and having older vehicles. The hazard-based model also confirmed that drivers that speed relatively often have a lower tendency to adopt CVS, and drivers who experienced an accident in the past were more inclined to adopt CVS via PAYS. Also, drivers' opinion about CVS, vehicle characteristics, demographics, and driving experience influenced the effect of PAYS characteristics on acceptability of CVS. Finally, we offer recommendations for how to effectively implement CVS, in order to significantly reduce the high fatality and accident rates in middle-income countries such as Iran.

The Unintended Consequence of Price-Based Service Recovery Incentives

Subscription-based service providers (e.g., newspapers, internet services) often issue price-based incentives to recover from service failures. However, because considerable time may pass between when providers issue a recovery incentive and when service contracts are due for renewal, it is unclear whether recovery incentives can improve customer retention in the long run. The authors investigate this question by examining 6,919 contract renewal decisions of newspaper subscribers who received varying levels of recovery incentives after newspaper delivery failures. In contrast to conventional wisdom, they find that recovery incentives are associated with lower contract renewal likelihoods. They rationalize this finding using the economic theory of reference prices and further demonstrate that firms could mitigate the unintended consequence of recovery incentives by reminding subscribers of the original price at touch points following the recovery, discounting the renewal price, and prolonging the duration between the recovery and renewal. The authors also show that the intensity of promotions in the external environment at the time of administering recovery incentives, and that acquiring subscribers by communicating the value of the subscription service, can influence the long-term effectiveness of recovery incentives. For subscription-based service providers, the authors propose a decision support model to optimize recovery and renewal incentives and demonstrate its utility within this empirical context.

Consumer intentions to purchase battery electric vehicles in Korea

In Korea, the sales of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) have increased since their introduction to the market in 2010. However, considering the government's plan to introduce BEVs, current BEVs sales in Korea are still below targeted numbers. Among several reasons for this, consumers' intentions and desired time to purchase BEVs are the most important. This study identifies the factors that affect and influence these two reasons. We used survey data containing these two reasons as stated preferences and applied a binary choice model to estimate consumers' intentions to purchase BEVs and an ordered model to estimate the desired period for purchasing BEVs. The study's results show that prior experience driving BEVs and other additional factors—including number of household vehicles, educational level, and perception of government incentives and public parking benefits—have a significant effect on consumers' intentions and desired time to purchase BEVs. Therefore, providing consumers with prior opportunities to drive BEVs is critical for BEVs' full market penetration in Korea.

A\xa0pricing scheme for electric utility's participation in day-ahead and real-time\xa0flexibility energy markets

Liberalized electricity markets, smart grids and high penetration of renewable energy sources (RESs) led to the development of novel markets, whose objective is the harmonization between production and demand, usually noted as real time of flexibility markets. This necessitates the development of novel pricing schemes able to allow energy service providers (ESPs) to maximize their aggregated profits from the traditional markets (trading between wholesale/day-ahead and retail markets) and the innovative flexibility markets. In the same time, ESPs have to offer their end users (consumers) competitive (low cost) energy services. In this context, novel pricing schemes must act, among others, as automated demand side management (DSM) techniques that are able to trigger the desired behavioral changes according to the flexibility market prices in energy consumption curves (ECCs) of the consumers. Energy pricing schemes proposed so far, e.g. real-time pricing, interact in an efficient way with wholesale market. But they do not provide strong enough financial incentives to consumers to modify their energy consumption habits towards energy cost curtailment. Thus, they do not interact efficiently with flexibility markets. Therefore, we develop a flexibility real-time pricing (FRTP) scheme, which offers a dynamically adjustable level of financial incentives to participating users by fairly rewarding the ones that make desirable behavioral changes in their ECCs. Performance evaluation results demonstrate that the proposed FRTP is able to offer a 15%–30% more attractive trade-off between the stacked profits of ESPs, i.e. the sum of the profits from retail and flexibility markets, and the satisfaction of the consumers.

The Choice of Wage Rate and Incentive for Labour Productivity Maximization

This paper utilizes the computable general equilibrium model to capture the labour productivity of workers and establishes the optimal wage rate and incentive level that maximize labour productivity for the firm. Over time, the household accepts these wage rates and incentives from the firm and maximizes her utility. As such, equilibrium is maintained in the economy. The market price is sticky in the short run, and thus, the dynamic changes in the preference of the household for leisure and labour hour distort the equilibrium price level. Restoring equilibrium entails adjusting the wage rate level in our model. In addition, our model shows that the household demands for more consumption goods and leisure as earnings increase.

A Pavlovian account for paradoxical effects of motivation on controlling response vigour

In high stakes situations, people sometimes choke under pressure, performing below their abilities. Here, we suggest a novel mechanism to account for this paradoxical effect of motivation: the automatic adjustment of action vigour to potential reward. Although adaptive on average, this mechanism may impede fine motor control. Such detrimental effect was observed in three studies (n = 74 in total), using behavioural tasks where payoff depended on the precision of handgrip squeezing or golf putting. Participants produced more force for higher incentives, which aggravated their systematic overshooting of low-force targets. This reward bias was specific to action vigour, as reward did not alter action timing, direction or variability across trials. Although participants could report their reward bias, they somehow failed to limit their produced force. Such an automatic link between incentive and force level might correspond to a Pavlovian response that is counterproductive when action vigour is not instrumental for maximizing reward.

For more than money: willingness of health professionals to stay in remote Senegal

BackgroundPoor distribution of already inadequate numbers of health professionals seriously constrains equitable access to health services in low- and middle-income countries. The Senegalese Government is currently developing policy to encourage health professionals to remain in areas defined as ‘difficult’. Understanding health professional’s preferences is crucial for this policy development.MethodsWorking with the Senegalese Government, a choice experiment (CE) was developed to elicit the job preferences of physicians and non-physicians. Attributes were defined using a novel mixed-methods approach, combining interviews and best-worst scaling (Case 1). Six attributes were categorised as ‘individual (extrinsic) incentive’ attributes (‘type of contract’, ‘provision of training opportunities’, ‘provision of an allowance’ and ‘provision of accommodation’) or ‘functioning health system’ attributes (‘availability of basic equipment in health facilities’ and ‘provision of supportive supervision by health administrators’). Using face-to-face interviews, the CE was administered to 55 physicians (3909 observations) and 246 non-physicians (17 961 observations) randomly selected from those working in eight ‘difficult’ regions in Senegal. Conditional logit was used to analyse responses. This is the first CE to both explore the impact of contract type on rural retention and to estimate value of attributes in terms of willingness to stay (WTS) in current rural post.ResultsFor both physicians and non-physicians, a permanent contract is the most important determinant of rural job retention, followed by availability of equipment and provision of training opportunities. Retention probabilities suggest that policy reform affecting only a single attribute is unlikely to encourage health professionals to remain in ‘difficult’ regions. The relative importance of an allowance is low; however, the level of such financial incentives requires further investigation.ConclusionContract type is a key factor impacting on retention. This has led the Senegalese Health Ministry to introduce a new rural assignment policy that recruits permanent staff from the pool of annually contracted healthcare professionals on the condition that they take up rural posts. While this is a useful policy development, further efforts to retain rural health workers, considering both personal incentives and the functioning of health systems, are necessary to ensure health worker numbers are adequate to meet the needs of rural communities.

Does carbon farming provide a cost‐effective option to mitigate GHG emissions? Evidence from China

In this study, we apply a whole farm bioeconomic analysis to explore the changes in land use, farm practices and on‐farm greenhouse gas (GHG) emission under varying levels of agricultural greenhouse gas abatement incentives in the form of a carbon tax for a semi‐arid crop‐livestock farming system in China's Loess Plateau. Our results show that the optimised agricultural enterprises move towards being cropping‐dominated reducing on‐farm emission since livestock perform is the major source of emission. Farmers employ less oats‐based and rapeseed‐based rotations but more dry pea‐based rotations in the optimal enterprise mix. A substantial reduction in on‐farm greenhouse gas emission can be achieved at low cost with a small increase in carbon incentives. Our estimates indicate that crop‐livestock farmers in China's Loess Plateau may reduce their on‐farm GHG emission between 16.6 and 33 per cent with marginal abatement costs <￥100/t CO2e and ￥150/t CO2e in 2015 Chinese Yuan. The analysis implies that reducing greenhouse gas emission in China's semi‐arid crop‐livestock agriculture is potentially a low‐cost option.

Decision support system for considering the best teacher performance using MOORA method

Islamic Boarding School is a school where students stay, live and study about formal educations and Islamic religion educations in the dormitory. The best teacher performance in Islamic boarding school is assessed using two competences, hard and soft competency. Each of these competences has many criteria. The assessment is conducted in every semester. The assessment aims to support and improve the quality of teacher’s performance because its result become as baseline to determine incentive level and warning letter for teachers. These assessments can lead tedious, human error and subjectively decision. To avoid the wrong decision, it is necessary a decision support system for helping to decide the best teacher performance. This application was using Multi Objective Optimization method on the Basis of Ratio Analysis (MOORA). This research produced a web-based decision support system that was used to help decision maker to decide the best teacher performance.

What Do Potential Residents Really Want When Hosting a Nuclear Power Plant? An Empirical Study of Economic Incentives in South Korea

To increase acceptance of new nuclear power plants (NPPs) by local communities, some countries offer those communities economic incentives. This study analyzes potential residents’ preferences for economic incentives provided during the construction and operation of NPPs in South Korea. This study uses stated preference data through a discrete choice experiment and the mixed logit model to reflect the heterogeneity of respondents’ preferences. The analysis results confirm heterogeneity by various incentive types, and show that respondents consider the distance between the NPP and the residential area as well as reduced electricity bills as crucial attribute of new NPPs. In addition, the result for the marginal willingness to be near to an NPP shows that reduced electricity bills, construction of new public facilities, and increased residents’ participation are relatively more effective incentives than job creation or solar panel installation. In particular, increased residents’ participation could greatly improve acceptance although it is not a direct form of financial support. The simulation analysis results indicate that acceptance of NPPs rapidly reduces as distance to the plant becomes shorter, although acceptance can change within a 0–30% range depending on the level of incentives. Several policy implications are suggested for policymakers based on the results.