Absence of Quantity-Quality Trade-Off in Performance Tournaments

In Simple Words

Imagine a taxi driver rewarded solely for the total number of trips made; if the evaluation system simultaneously tracks passenger satisfaction and trip duration, the driver cannot simply rush through micro-trips or ignore distant passengers to artificially inflate their trip count.

Research question

Performance-based incentives and promotion tournaments tied to quantitative output metrics often induce multitasking distortions, leading workers to maximize volume while sacrificing service quality or cherry-picking easy targets.

Participants

N = 2,009 Community Health Workers evaluated via random surveys across 10% of village primary female caregivers in 372 Peripheral Health Units in Sierra Leone.

Study Design

Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) measuring routine vs. specialized health visits, average visit duration, and household spatial/social distance under meritocratic vs. control promotion regimes over a 10-month period.

Results

Transitioning to meritocratic promotions increased average visit length by 15% (from 11.99 minutes baseline) and increased routine health visits by 30% (+1.084 visits; p < 0.05) without worsening household targeting or shifting visits disproportionately toward friends and family.

Takeaway

Design meritocratic promotion evaluation metrics that combine quantitative volume with unannounced quality checks and visit duration to prevent multitasking effort distortion.

Read alongside the research

Plain-English glossary

Original explanations, informed by the references below. Examples are illustrations, not data from the studies above. The research text stays unchanged.

Randomized controlled trial

A study that uses chance, like drawing lots, to decide who receives each option being compared. Researchers compare the groups’ outcomes to estimate the effect of those options.

ExampleA lottery assigns volunteers to a training programme or a comparison group. Researchers then compare their outcomes.

GET-IT glossary · Randomized study ↗Read more about randomized controlled trial →

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