When Extrinsic Rewards Become “Sour Grapes”: An Experimental Study of Adjustments in Intrinsic and Prosocial Motivation

Abstract

This article challenges conventional wisdom put forward by the motivational crowding literature by examining whether hypothetical changes to incentive structures can cause variation in employee motivation. It links such motivational adjustments to theories of cognitive dissonance and self-rationalization, and thereby offers a more nuanced perspective on government reforms in the area of human resource management. The article puts forward the idea that expectations of few extrinsic rewards can raise employees’ levels of intrinsic and prosocial motivation; this response is seen as a cognitive coping mechanism to self-justify the value of one’s work. A randomized experiment with 129 public administration students provides partial evidence for the hypothesized effect. Students who were confronted with media information suggesting that few extrinsic rewards can be expected in a public-sector career reported higher scores of intrinsic motivation than the group whose vignette suggested the opposite. No effect was found with regard to students’ public service motivation.

Caught Between Volunteerism and Professionalism: Support by Nonprofit Leaders for the Donative Labor Hypothesis

“…That is, an individual will adjust his or her preferences or values according to the current situation. Kroll and Porumbescu (2018) showed that, due to cognitive dissonance coping mechanisms, participants of an experimental survey, who have the need to self-justify their public service career decisions, report higher levels of intrinsic and prosocial motivation when few extrinsic rewards are expected by their choice.…”

Can budget ambiguity crowd out intrinsic motivation? Longitudinal evidence from federal executive departments

“…To date, public management scholars have produced a wealth of research investigating determinants of intrinsic motivation. This research has helped to shed light on the importance of organizational features such as payment and compensation (Weibel et al ), individual features such as leadership style (Bellé ), and environmental features such as media coverage (Kroll and Porumbescu ). However, despite the valuable contributions that have been made, we know relatively little about the relationship between resource allocation and public employees’ intrinsic motivation.…”

“…The measure of intrinsic motivation that Grant (2008) derives from these three distinctive features of intrinsic motivation forms the basis for the measure used in this study. The resulting items also bear resemblance to measures of intrinsic motivation used elsewhere in public management research (Jacobsen et al 2014;Kroll and Porumbescu 2019).…”

A Systematic Review of Experimental Approaches on Public Service Motivation

“…The United States tops the list with seven experimental studies, followed by four studies from the Netherlands and Italy, three studies from Germany, and two studies from Denmark. (Jensen, Andersen, and Jacobsen 2019;Kroll and Porumbescu 2019), and four articles emphasize measuring PSM (Kim and Kim 2016a, 2016bMarvel and Resh 2019). We categorize 20 studies treating PSM as an independent, control, and moderating variables into a single category-effect.…”

“…Only two experimental studies treat PSM as an outcome variable (Jensen, Andersen, and Jacobsen. 2019;Kroll and Porumbescu 2019), which are summarized in table 7. Adopting a vignette survey experiment, Kroll and Porumbescu (2019) examine if extrinsic rewards affect public workers' PSM levels.…”