Our life is built around coordinating efforts with others. This usually involves incentivizing others to do things, and sustaining our relationship with them. Using the wrong incentives backfires: it lowers effort and tarnishes our relationships. But what constitutes a ‘wrong’ incentive? And...

Our life is built around coordinating efforts with others. This usually involves incentivizing others to do things, and sustaining our relationship with them. Using the wrong incentives backfires: it lowers effort and tarnishes our relationships. But what constitutes a ‘wrong’ incentive? And...

To encourage farsighted behaviors, past research suggests marketers may be wise to invite consumers to pre-commit to adopt them “later”. However, across a large, multi-site field experiment of retirement savings decisions and three pre-registered laboratory studies (N=10,255), we find no...

Firms often use appeals like “Your voice matters” or “Have your say in our company’s direction” when attempting to increase customer engagement. We examine whether trying to motivate people by persuading them that their behavior is consequential – a tactic that we call an “agency...

Policymakers and business leaders often use peer comparison information—showing people how their behavior compares to that of their peers—to motivate a range of behaviors. Despite their widespread use, the potential impact of peer comparison interventions on recipients’ well-being is...