Incentive schemes increase risky behavior in a safety-critical working task
- As financial incentive schemes have the tendency to increase risky behavior, we analyzed their effect on rule-related behavior in a safety-critical task. We compared risky behavior (in terms of the amount of rule violations) between three payment condition: continuous, up-front, and bonus pay. Fifty-nine participants were trained as production personnel to conduct a start-up procedure of a simulated wastewater treatment plant, representing a high reliability organization. During the 5-h experimental study, risky behavior could have been applied 48 times while building a simulated production year. The results show that the conditions with an incentive scheme (up-front and bonus pay) led to significantly more rule violations than the condition with continuous payment without an incentive scheme. Our study highlights the general increased risk effect of incentive schemes and provides a starting point for industries to assess their implicit and explicit incentive schemes.
| Author: | Sebastian BrandhorstORCiDGND, Annette KlugeORCiDGND |
|---|---|
| URN: | urn:nbn:de:hbz:294-90596 |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.3390/safety8010017 |
| Parent Title (English): | Safety |
| Subtitle (English): | an experimental comparison in a simulated high-reliability organization |
| Publisher: | MDPI |
| Place of publication: | Basel |
| Document Type: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Date of Publication (online): | 2022/06/23 |
| Date of first Publication: | 2022/03/04 |
| Publishing Institution: | Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Universitätsbibliothek |
| Tag: | Open Access Fonds behavior-based safety management; evidence-based management; rule violations |
| Volume: | 8 |
| Issue: | 1, Article 17 |
| First Page: | 17-1 |
| Last Page: | 17-15 |
| Note: | Article Processing Charge funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and the Open Access Publication Fund of Ruhr-Universität Bochum. |
| Institutes/Facilities: | Arbeitseinheit Arbeits-, Organisations- und Wirtschaftspsychologie |
| Dewey Decimal Classification: | Philosophie und Psychologie / Psychologie |
| open_access (DINI-Set): | open_access |
| faculties: | Fakultät für Psychologie |
| Licence (English): |  Creative Commons - CC BY 4.0 - Attribution 4.0 International |
