IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wsi/serxxx/v62y2017i04ns0217590817400276.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Small Rewards Or Some Encouragement? Using An Experiment In China To Test Extrinsic Motivation On Academic Performance

Author

Listed:
  • ROLAND CHEO

    (The Center for Economic Research, Shandong University, 27 Shanda Nanlu, Jinan 250100, China)

Abstract

Extrinsic motivation can play a healthy role in influencing student performance, however, in the developing world without outside intervention, the provider of such extrinsic motivation is usually one with limited means, such as the village school teacher, or a parent struggling to make ends meet. Hence, this paper asks the question: Can limited extrinsic motivation affect academic performance? In particular, we look at two types of extrinsic motivation: small rewards and some encouragement and examine which does a better job to motivate students. We find in this study that the promise of a reward leads to improvement in scores during the treatment period, however, encouragement improves student performance in the post-treatment period (during the national primary school leaving examination).

Suggested Citation

  • Roland Cheo, 2017. "Small Rewards Or Some Encouragement? Using An Experiment In China To Test Extrinsic Motivation On Academic Performance," The Singapore Economic Review (SER), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 62(04), pages 797-808, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:wsi:serxxx:v:62:y:2017:i:04:n:s0217590817400276
    DOI: 10.1142/S0217590817400276
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0217590817400276
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1142/S0217590817400276?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michael Kremer & Edward Miguel & Rebecca Thornton, 2009. "Incentives to Learn," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 91(3), pages 437-456, August.
    2. Frey, Bruno S & Oberholzer-Gee, Felix, 1997. "The Cost of Price Incentives: An Empirical Analysis of Motivation Crowding-Out," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(4), pages 746-755, September.
    3. Moussa P. Blimpo, 2014. "Team Incentives for Education in Developing Countries: A Randomized Field Experiment in Benin," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(4), pages 90-109, October.
    4. Joshua Angrist & Victor Lavy, 2009. "The Effects of High Stakes High School Achievement Awards: Evidence from a Randomized Trial," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(4), pages 1384-1414, September.
    5. Frey, Bruno S, 1997. "A Constitution for Knaves Crowds Out Civic Virtues," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 107(443), pages 1043-1053, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Uwe Dulleck & Juliana Silva-Goncalves & Benno Torgler, 2014. "Impact Evaluation of an Incentive Program on Educational Achievement of Indigenous Students," CREMA Working Paper Series 2014-13, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    2. Figlio, D. & Karbownik, K. & Salvanes, K.G., 2016. "Education Research and Administrative Data," Handbook of the Economics of Education,, Elsevier.
    3. Li, Tao & Han, Li & Zhang, Linxiu & Rozelle, Scott, 2014. "Encouraging classroom peer interactions: Evidence from Chinese migrant schools," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 29-45.
    4. Samuel Bowles & Sandra Polania-Reyes, 2011. "Economic incentives and social preferences: substitutes or complements?," Department of Economics University of Siena 617, Department of Economics, University of Siena.
    5. Roel Elk & Marc Steeg & Dinand Webbink, 2013. "Can Financial Incentives for Regional Education Authorities Reduce School Dropout?," De Economist, Springer, vol. 161(4), pages 367-398, December.
    6. Steven D. Levitt & John A. List & Susanne Neckermann & Sally Sadoff, 2016. "The Behavioralist Goes to School: Leveraging Behavioral Economics to Improve Educational Performance," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 8(4), pages 183-219, November.
    7. Bigoni, Maria & Fort, Margherita & Nardotto, Mattia & Reggiani, Tommaso G., 2011. "Teams or Tournaments? A Field Experiment on Cooperation and Competition among University Students," IZA Discussion Papers 5844, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Oswald, Yvonne & Backes-Gellner, Uschi, 2014. "Learning for a bonus: How financial incentives interact with preferences," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 52-61.
    9. Bruno S. Frey & Alois Stutzer, 2006. "Environmental Morale and Motivation," CREMA Working Paper Series 2006-17, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    10. Edwin Leuven & Hessel Oosterbeek & Bas van der Klaauw, 2010. "The Effect of Financial Rewards on Students' Achievement: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 8(6), pages 1243-1265, December.
    11. James Berry, 2015. "Child Control in Education Decisions: An Evaluation of Targeted Incentives to Learn in India," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 50(4), pages 1051-1080.
    12. Manuela Angelucci & Silvia Prina & Heather Royer & Anya Samek, 2015. "When Incentives Backfire: Spillover Effects in Food Choice," NBER Working Papers 21481, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Eric P. Bettinger, 2012. "Paying to Learn: The Effect of Financial Incentives on Elementary School Test Scores," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 94(3), pages 686-698, August.
    14. Borghans, Lex & Meijers, Huub & ter Weel, Bas, 2013. "The importance of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for measuring IQ," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 17-28.
    15. Roland G. Fryer, Jr & Tanaya Devi & Richard T. Holden, 2012. "Vertical versus Horizontal Incentives in Education: Evidence from Randomized Trials," NBER Working Papers 17752, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. repec:cep:stieop:46 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Visaria, Sujata & Dehejia, Rajeev & Chao, Melody M. & Mukhopadhyay, Anirban, 2016. "Unintended consequences of rewards for student attendance: Results from a field experiment in Indian classrooms," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 173-184.
    18. Jörg Peters & Jörg Langbein & Gareth Roberts, 2018. "Generalization in the Tropics – Development Policy, Randomized Controlled Trials, and External Validity," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 33(1), pages 34-64.
    19. Belot, Michèle & James, Jonathan & Nolen, Patrick, 2016. "Incentives and children's dietary choices: A field experiment in primary schools," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 213-229.
    20. Chad M. Baum & Christian Gross, 2017. "Sustainability policy as if people mattered: developing a framework for environmentally significant behavioral change," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 19(1), pages 53-95, April.
    21. Abramitzky, Ran & Lavy, Victor & Pérez, Santiago, 2021. "The long-term spillover effects of changes in the return to schooling," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wsi:serxxx:v:62:y:2017:i:04:n:s0217590817400276. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Tai Tone Lim (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.worldscinet.com/ser/ser.shtml .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.