Cooperation culture and monetary incentives to cooperate: An experiment in a company

Last registered on February 12, 2026
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Cooperation culture and monetary incentives to cooperate: An experiment in a company
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0003931
Initial registration date
February 20, 2019

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
February 25, 2019, 10:02 PM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated
February 12, 2026, 12:53 PM EST

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Country
Germany
Region

Primary Investigator

Name
Marvin Deversi
Affiliation
Ludwig-Maximilans-University Munich
Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Lisa Spantig
PI Affiliation

Additional Trial Information

Status
Completed
Start date
2019-02-06
End date
2019-02-21
Keywords
Firms & Productivity
Additional Keywords
cooperation, trust, corporate culture, incentives, crowding-in/-out
JEL code(s)
C72, D83, C91, H41, M52
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
Cooperation among employees is one of the most important pillars for company success. A common practice to foster a cooperative culture among employees is to provide monetary incentives to cooperate. For example, through managers or institutional arrangements that allocate monetary rewards to more cooperative employees. However, economic theory as well as empirical evidence suggest that such incentive choices can induce unintended side effects. In the economic literature on cooperation it has been emphasized that incentive choices can signal bad (or good) news about the prevalence of uncooperative individuals in a population. As a consequence, incentives can have limited or even counterproductive effects on cooperative behavior. Do incentive choices work as information devices in a natural environment, namely, in a company that wants to foster cooperation? And what are the implications for the company’s efforts? The pre-analysis plan that I upload here outlines hypotheses and planned analyses of a fully-incentivized online experiment with about 50 managers and 350-400 employees from a large company. It focuses on the information effects induced by managers’ incentive choices on the cooperation culture among employees measured in an online public good game experiment.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Deversi, Marvin and Lisa Spantig. 2026. "Cooperation culture and monetary incentives to cooperate: An experiment in a company ." AEA RCT Registry. February 12. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.3931-3.0
Former Citation
Deversi, Marvin and Lisa Spantig. 2026. "Cooperation culture and monetary incentives to cooperate: An experiment in a company ." AEA RCT Registry. February 12. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/3931/history/293588
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
In 2017, the company has participated in a first study (as outlined by Deversi et al., 2019, AEARCTR-0002596) to measure and subsequently foster their culture of cooperation. Importantly, the managers and all subordinate employees have not been informed about the study results yet. In the planned online experiment, I randomly inform managers about the results and randomly state to employees that the manager has been informed. In the planned experiment, managers choose incentives of a public good game played by non-managing employees.
Intervention (Hidden)
Intervention Start Date
2019-02-06
Intervention End Date
2019-02-21

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
The main variables of interest are the belief about others’ contributions and the descriptive norm.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
The between-treatment difference-in-differences are also used.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Other variables of interest are the unconditional contributions, injunctive norms, and cooperative attitudes. I use the employees’ beliefs about the managers’ choice behavior, expectations, and prescriptive views as robustness variables.
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
I use a between subject design for managers and non-managing employees.

Treated managers get informed about the cooperation behavior of employees in the first study. Managers in the control group do not receive any information on this.

I state to the non-managing employees in the treatment group that managers have been informed when choosing incentives of the game to be played. There is no statement about this in the control group‘s instructions.

Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Randomization done by the company's survey team in their office using a computer.
Randomization Unit
Work teams.
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
No clusters planned for analysis. Approx. 120 teams selected.
Sample size: planned number of observations
About 50 managers and 350-400 non-managing employees.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
About 185 per treatment arm.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
I should have enough power to detect economically sizable and relevant effects that are larger than 0.31 using a Mann-Whitney U test. Details can be found in the analysis plan.
Supporting Documents and Materials

Documents

Document Name
Analyses according to the pre-analysis plan
Document Type
other
Document Description
This document provides the analyses mentioned in the pre-analysis plan that are not covered in the paper.
File
Analyses according to the pre-analysis plan

MD5:

SHA1:

Uploaded At: February 12, 2026

IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Ethics Committee of LMU Munich
IRB Approval Date
2019-01-30
IRB Approval Number
N/A
Analysis Plan

Analysis Plan Documents

Analysis_plan_2019_02_20_Deversi

MD5: e4d8584c06626339a7fde9e879c14744

SHA1: 8415f4c6be524c905903828d330f6abac9dde23f

Uploaded At: February 20, 2019

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
Yes
Intervention Completion Date
February 21, 2019, 12:00 +00:00
Data Collection Complete
Yes
Data Collection Completion Date
February 21, 2019, 12:00 +00:00
Final Sample Size: Number of Clusters (Unit of Randomization)
Was attrition correlated with treatment status?
No
Final Sample Size: Total Number of Observations
401 employees, 47 managers
Final Sample Size (or Number of Clusters) by Treatment Arms
NoInfo: 205 employees, 23 managers Info: 196 employees, 24 managers
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Abstract
Economists and management scholars have argued that the scope of incentives to increase cooperation in organizations is limited as their use signals the prevalence of free-riding among employees. This paper tests this hypothesis experimentally, using a sample of managers and employees from a large company. We exogenously vary whether managers are informed about prevailing cooperation levels among employees before they can set incentives to promote cooperation. In addition, employees matched to informed managers learn that the manager could base their incentive choice on cooperation levels. We find no evidence for the hypothesized signaling effect. Having an informed manager set the incentive does not change employees’ be-liefs about the cooperativeness of others. Incentives hence have strong positive effects on cooperative beliefs, irrespective of information. The absence of the signaling effect seems related to the perception of managers’ intentions, a mitigating but understudied factor.
Citation
Deversi & Spantig (2023): "Incentive and Signaling Effects of Bonus Payments: An Experiment in a Company", CESifo Working Paper 10302
URL
https://www.ifo.de/en/cesifo/publications/2023/working-paper/incentive-and-signaling-effects-bonus-payments-experiment-company

Reports & Other Materials