Rankings and Social Tournaments: Evidence From a Crowd-Sourcing Experiment

There is a growing interest in behavioral incentive schemes exploiting people preference about how they rank compared to others as a non-monetary mechanism to shape effort. In this paper we present evidence from a crowd-sourcing experiment where employees were given feedback about how they rank in terms of performance compared to others doing the same task. The context is such that rank had no implication for current or future compensation. Compared to a control group with no rank feedback, employees who received feedback about their rank were less likely to return to work and also less productive on the job.