Paid With(out) Purpose: Costs of Poor Matches on the Meaning of Work

Recent reporting and studies in Economics discuss meaning or purpose as an important dimension of work. Like location, culture, or benefits, work meaning may enter idiosyncratically into a worker's utility function and affect work choices on both extensive and intensive margins. I replicate and extend the findings of other studies (e.g. Burbano 2016) that workers have lower reservation pay amounts for tasks framed as meaningful (relative to the same task not framed as meaningful), even absent a firm-framing context. However, mine and other studies have used a constant, top-down, inflexible assignment of "meaningful" and "non-meaningful" task framing in our designs, not allowing for variation in worker perception of and taste for meaning. Therefore, I then investigate potential costs of poor matching of worker and task on this dimension of meaning, allowing for heterogeneity in both worker perception of and preference for meaning.