Incentive mechanisms, loan decisions and policy rationing : A framed field experiment on rural credit

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether negative incentives in the pay-for-performance mechanism would trigger loan officers to strategically reject potentially good loans. If so, what is the feasible solution to alleviate the problem. Design/methodology/approach A framed field experiment was conducted to test loan decision behaviors using loan officers from Rural Credit Cooperatives in Shandong, China. A 2 by 2 between-subject design was adopted to generate variation in incentives and prior information about credit risks. Findings Results showed that loan officers did ration credit by rejecting more loans when facing risks of personal income loss. However, providing risk information about the application pool boosted the approval rate and offset the behavioral responses by a roughly same magnitude. Research limitations/implications Findings in this study suggest that certain institutional settings can result in credit rationing via strategic loan misclassification. Further, information sometimes generates similar effects as those costly incentives or mechanisms that are not implementable in practice. Originality/value This study adopted an innovative monetized experimental design that allows researchers to examine the (otherwise unobservable) trade-offs between Type I and Type II error in loan misclassification as incentives change. In addition, an anchoring prior information treatment is used to solicit the relative power of almost costless information and costly monetary incentives, and to point out a potentially feasible solution.