The Magic of the Personal Touch: Field Experimental Evidence on Money and Appreciation as Gifts
Referierte Fachzeitschrift // 2019In this paper, we use two field experiments in professional settings to explore the effort levels of individuals in response to gifts. We extend the literature by looking at non-financial gifts that signal worker appreciation and gifts that combine financial and non-financial elements with or without a personal touch. We find that while money and appreciation are individually effective, these only work well together when they are combined with a personal touch. This suggests that responses to gifts are sensitive to the presentation of the gift as well as to interpersonal elements; these are factors that have so far been largely ignored in the literature but are easy to incorporate into existing principal–agent models.