Trust, Health, and Conflict: Socioeconomic Responses to Crises

[2E203] Sales promotion in preventative health with incentives to stimulate the efforts of community health volunteers
-Empirical research in the Special Regency of Yogyakarta, Indonesia-

*Ziying LIU^1,2 (1. Kobe University, 2. Asia Pacific Institute of Research)

Keywords:Monetary incentives, Community health volunteers, Preventative health , Sales promotion, Indonesia

Community health volunteers are closely connected to their communities, making them well-positioned to encourage preventive health behaviors in their community. Monetary incentives are commonly used to boost motivation; however, they can sometimes backfire in pro-social tases, such as volunteer activities or blood donations, where altruism is the primary motivator. This study explores what forms of incentives effectively motivate health volunteers to spread high-performance face masks in their community to prevent infectious diseases. A randomized controlled trial (RCT), in which a small monetary incentive, a large monetary incentive, or a social incentive was randomly assigned to the participants, was undertaken. In addition, half of the participants were randomly assigned to one group whose sales outcomes disclosed to their colleagues, whereas sales outcomes were kept confidential among the other group, with the intention of stimulating more competition among them. The analytical results firstly find that, regardless of disclosing the volunteers’ sales information or not, health volunteers sell more masks when receiving a larger monetary incentive. The results secondly show information disclosure promotes the total sales of health volunteers only when they receive a small monetary incentive. Under the condition of information disclosure, some might be embarrassed if they receive a large monetary reward for pro-social activities. This study provides valuable evidence for possible improvements in CHWs’ activity management for policymakers in Indonesia and, potentially, in other developing countries. Furthermore, this research contributes to the broad literature evaluating the effect of incentives in public health and behavior economics literature studying how to better motivate people driven by altruism to engage in pro-social activities.