Personality Traits and Performance Contracts: Evidence from a Field Experiment among Maternity Care Providers in India
Conference Paper
We study how agents respond to performance incentives according to key personality traits (conscientiousness and neuroticism) through a field experiment offering financial incentives for improving maternal and neonatal health outcomes to rural Indian doctors. More conscientious providers performed better--but improved less--under performance incentives. The effect of the performance incentives was also smaller for providers with higher levels of neuroticism. Our results contribute to a growing body of empirical research on heterogeneous responses to incentives and have implications for worker selection.
Full Text
Duke Authors
Cited Authors
- Donato, K; Miller, G; Mohanan, M; Truskinovsky, Y; Vera-Hernández, M
Published Date
- May 1, 2017
Published In
Volume / Issue
- 107 / 5
Start / End Page
- 506 - 510
Published By
PubMed ID
- 29553630
Pubmed Central ID
- 29553630
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
- 0002-8282
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
- 10.1257/aer.p20171105