工商管理学院建院30周年

系列学术报告 第7场

报告题目：Reference Effects in Worker Motivation

报 告 人：山东大学经济研究院  Jaimie W. Lien教授

报告时间：2024年5月22日（周三）16:00~17:30

报告地点：文管学馆B306

报告摘要：

The use of performance-based reference points in workplace settings is common, however, the question of how to optimally set such benchmarks to behaviorally motivate workers remains under-studied. We implement a series of experiments involving over 3000 workers on an online platform to test the influences of externally and self-determined reference points on worker motivation. We consider two main types of tasks which differ in their relative emphasis on cognitive demands as compared to physical demands. We find that in cognitive-oriented tasks, ex-ante self-estimation on performance and information about the high performance of another worker both increase performance through worker retention. However, introducing another worker’s low performance result can also be motivating under certain timing conditions. Ex-ante self-estimation of one’s own performance significantly reduces workers’ over-confidence. For tasks of a tedious manual nature, externally provided benchmarks and self-estimations reinforce one another to negatively affect the total amount of work that a worker chooses to complete. However, ex-ante self-estimation still generally helps performance, while knowing about the low performance result of another worker can also be significantly motivating. We also examine the role of reference point effects in team or group settings. Previous performance success on an individual task nearly eliminates the prevalent free riding that occurs in team production. Finally, when workers are paid different amounts for the same work, workers receiving relatively less pay are more risk-taking, while workers receiving either relatively low pay or the best pay are the most willing to commit to future work.

报告人简介：

   连暐虹教授，美国威尔斯利学院经济学学士，美国加州大学圣地亚哥分校经济学硕士、博士。现任山东大学经济研究院教授，山东大学特聘教授。研究方向包括行为经济学、实验经济学、应用微观经济学，主持过面上、青年等多项国家自然科学基金项目、教育部科研项目、香港研究资助局项目（结题获“优”评价），并多次在学术会议上做主旨演讲与专题报告。研究工作发表于Nature Communications、PNAS、American Economic Review (Papers and Proceedings)、Games and Economic Behavior、Experimental Economics、Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization等国际知名期刊。担任North American Journal of Economics and Finance等多份国际学术期刊客座编辑与编委成员，担任内地、香港、台湾、新加坡等政府科研资助机构评审专家，担任多所高校教师晋升外审专家，担任31种期刊匿名评审人，多次获评杰出评审人，是清华大学经济科学与政策实验室（ESPEL）创建人之一。

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