Leisure time instead of a monetary bonus?

Recently, many big industries are doubting whether bonus schemes are the most optimal way to reward employees. Also, leisure time has gained high importance amongst the newest generations. This paper examines whether leisure time as an incentive could be as effective as the often used monetary reward. An experiment that consists of a computerized real-effort task is spread amongst (ex-) students. The finding is that the immediate responses on both incentives do not differ significantly. However, after the first few minutes are terminated, the monetary incentive wins it over a reward of leisure time. That is at least in the case of the currently used experimental design and amongst (ex-) students. As soon as either one of the two changes, results are likely to change accordingly. This paper provides valuable insights that further research in a different setting or amongst another audience can build upon.