The effect of performance-contingent rewards on intrinsic motivation: mediating effect of self-efficacy and moderating effects of reward determining point and performance standard

Abstract

Previous researchers have shown that there are different effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation depending on its conditions, rewarding methods, and others. Based on existing literature showing that performance-contingent rewards have positive effects on intrinsic motivation through perceived competence (Eisenberger et al., 1999), I tried to test cognitive evaluation theory empirically. This research hypothesized that performance-contingent rewards have positive effects on intrinsic motivation, and self-efficacy mediates this relationship. Then, rewarding methods were categorized into pre-performance reward determining and post-performance reward determining based on the time when the extrinsic reward is determined. In addition, pre-performance rewarding was divided into two, one with reducible additional reward and another with reducible base reward. In general, pre-performance reward determining method is based on the premise that competence of recipients is high enough to meet the performance standards unless they fail to exert their full efforts. In fact, pre-performance rewarding is trying to prevent such cases of slacking off, so that it shows an intention to control. Therefore, I hypothesized that pre-performance rewarding would decrease the positive effects of performance-contingent rewards on self-efficacy. Additionally, based on Eisenberger et al. (1999) that found the different effects of extrinsic rewards by performance standards on intrinsic motivation, I hypothesized that performance standards also would moderate the relationship between performance-contingent rewards and self-efficacy. An online experiment was conducted to verify this; a webpage was developed using Java Script and a total of 805 participants were recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk. The results buttress the conjecture that self-efficacy mediates the relationship between performance-contingent rewards and intrinsic motivation. Also, the results showed that relative ...