Are non-contingent incentives more effective in motivating new behavior? Evidence from the field

Organizations and policymakers increasingly rely on economic incentives to prompt participation in activities amongst those who were previously not engaged. We ran a field experiment with a recycling program to examine incentives' effectiveness to motivate new behavior—i.e., attract non-recyclers. We compared standard contingent incentives (payment contingent on recycling) to non-contingent incentives (upfront unconditional payment) of different sizes. A high contingent incentive was as effective as a non-contingent incentive (of any size) in attracting people to the program, but this masked differences in who participated. Across incentive sizes, people who had never recycled were 5.8 times more likely to begin recycling with the program when given a non-contingent incentive (20.2%) than when offered a contingent one (3.5%). A second experiment conceptually replicated this effect in an online job market, showing that non-contingent incentives were substantially more effective in attracting previous non-compliers.