Más sobre incentivos y normas sociales

Muy relacionado con mi post del otro día, un artículo que acaba de salir en el JEL sobre el mismo asunto:

Explicit economic incentives designed to increase contributions to public goods and to
promote other pro-social behavior sometimes are counterproductive or less effective
than would be predicted among entirely self-interested individuals. This may occur
when incentives adversely affect individuals’ altruism, ethical norms, intrinsic motives
to serve the public, and other social preferences. The opposite also occurs—crowding
in—though it appears less commonly. In the fifty experiments that we survey, these
effects are common, so that incentives and social preferences may be either substitutes
(crowding out) or complements (crowding in). We provide evidence for four mechanisms
that may account for these incentive effects on preferences: namely that incentives may
(i) provide information about the person who implemented the incentive, (ii) frame
the decision situation so as to suggest appropriate behavior, (iii) compromise a control
averse individual’s sense of autonomy, and (iv) affect the process by which people learn
new preferences. An implication is that the evaluation of public policy must be restricted
to allocations that are supportable as Nash equilibria when account is taken of these
crowding effects. We show that well designed fines, subsidies, and the like minimize
crowding out and may even do the opposite, making incentives and social preferences
complements rather than substitutes.