Incentives for Student Effort

Despite the importance of student effort in determining education outcomes, relatively few programs have been designed to directly motivate students. Yet most school-age children face a difficult intertemporal decision problem since the costs of studying are immediate while the payoff is distant and uncertain. Although recent experiments have found that student incentives can improve learning outcomes under some circumstances, the impact of such rewards has likely been limited by a focus rewarding relatively distant outcomes (end-of-semester exams). This field experiment with primary school children in India leverages a technology-based learning platform to directly reward student effort (i.e. practicing) through both tangible and non-tangible incentives.