Incentives and Unintended Consequences: Spillover Effects in Food Choice

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Angelucci, Manuela; Prina, Silvia; Royer, Heather; Samek, Anya
• 署名单位: University of Texas System; University of Texas Austin; Northeastern University; University of California System; University of California Santa Barbara; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of Southern California
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-ECONOMIC POLICY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7731
• DOI: 10.1257/pol.20170588
• 发表日期: 2019
• 页码: 66-95
• 关键词: financial incentives; behavioral economics; habit formation; achievement evidence; social interactions; field experiment; retirement plan; CHILDREN; PARTICIPATION; INFORMATION

摘要

Little is known about how peers influence the impact of incentives. We study how peers' actions and incentives can lead to peer spillover effects. Using a field experiment on snack choice in the school lunchroom (choice of grapes versus cookies), we randomize who receives incentives, the fraction of peers incentivized, and whether or not it can be observed that peers' choices are incentivized. We show that, while peers' actions of picking grapes have a positive spillover effect on children's take-up of grapes, seeing that peers are incentivized to pick grapes has a negative spillover effect on take-up. When incentivized choices are public, incentivizing all children to pick grapes, relative to incentivizing none, has no statistically significant effect on take-up, as the negative spillover offsets the positive impacts of incentives.