Great article. What I take away from this is that an incentive must be part of a system and the incentive only works if the system is well engineered. The system must be designed with features that reduce negative side effects and discourage corruption.
Yeah, incentives can be a useful tool in your toolbox when it comes to behavior change but we,
i. Use them too often without thinking it through. I.e. If all you've got is a hammer...
ii. Don't take into account how they can backfire and automatically assume that our incentive will instantly translate into the desired behavior, until it blows up in our face.
Great article. What I take away from this is that an incentive must be part of a system and the incentive only works if the system is well engineered. The system must be designed with features that reduce negative side effects and discourage corruption.
Thanks for sharing your takeaway!
Yeah, incentives can be a useful tool in your toolbox when it comes to behavior change but we,
i. Use them too often without thinking it through. I.e. If all you've got is a hammer...
ii. Don't take into account how they can backfire and automatically assume that our incentive will instantly translate into the desired behavior, until it blows up in our face.