Monetary incentives versus class credit: Evidence from a large classroom trust experiment

This paper reports an experimental investigation of a trust game using either cash or class credit as incentives to participants. We recruit from two auditorium classes. In one class, each token has cash value; in the other, each token is worth extra-credit points added to the students’ overall average at the end of the semester. The results indicate that using extra-credit points to motivate participants generates qualitatively similar data on average as participants incentivized with cash. We do find a difference in behavior with second movers who expect a low grade, but those incentivized with class credit are closer to the game theoretic prediction.