The Effects of Money and Social Monetary Incentives on Performing Favors

In this thesis, an effort is made to reveal what type of monetary incentives trigger people to perform favors for others. Through a small-scale experiment where students of the Erasmus University Rotterdam were asked to fill in surveys for various rewards (money, social presented money or no money at all), the effect of the applied monetary incentives is measured and interpreted. The results imply that social monetary incentives have a greater effect on performing favors than monetary incentives or no incentives at all. Most of the results are not statistically significant because of the small scale of the experiment. However, this research is both interesting and important for two reasons, namely, because it provides experimental evidence about a subject which is not only relatively unknown under economists, but will also show that social monetary incentives can effectively trigger people to perform favors for one another. Furthermore, favor performance can be of great importance to managers of companies in their workforce. The experiment and results can be used as a stepping stone for further research on this subject.