Reducing Effort Increases Employee Cooperation: Evidence from a Field Experiment

• In Event: Poster Session: Innovations in Public Administration Research & Experimental Research
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Innovations in Public Administration Research

Abstract

Public servants are often asked to cooperate with operational guidelines. In theory, public managers can increase cooperation by clarifying norms or offering incentives. But evidence from behavioral science suggests that cooperation is also about effort. Working with a large government, we present results from a pre-registered field experiment (N=22,774) on cooperation with digital records management guidelines. We show that reducing the effort it takes for public servants to manage electronic records can influence their behavior. Our behavioral intervention combines a pre-commitment device with timely, salient information, resulting in a 5% reduction in data storage volume. Increased cooperation with records management guidelines led to significant cost savings for government that persisted even months after the trial. We also compare two motivational frames: corporate benefits (norms) vs. personal benefit (incentives). We find no difference in cooperation between these groups, which suggests effort is an especially powerful barrier to cooperation in the public sector.

Author

• Vincent Hopkins, University of British Columbia