Replication Data for: What's God God To Do With It? Estimating How Religious Affiliation Affects Individuals' Response to Extrinsic Rewards

Using data from a field experiment on incentives for private delivery of socially beneficial goods and services, we find that the effect of non-financial extrinsic rewards on condom sales performance depends dramatically on whether the sales agent is Catholic. We build on the analysis in Ashraf et al. (2014), which finds that non-financial rewards improve sales performance among 771 hair stylists in Lusaka, Zambia. We affirm that study’s findings with respect to non-Catholic participants but estimate considerably different intention-to-treat effects for Catholic ones. In particular, we find that in the study setting non-financial rewards did not improve Catholics’ sales performance. We also find suggestive evidence that financial rewards may have actually suppressed their sales performance, though these effects are imprecisely estimated. In the literature relating performance in pro-social enterprises to incentives, we could not find a study exploring how people’s religion or other broad cultural attributes intermediates their responsiveness to extrinsic rewards. We have therefore identified an important consideration for policy makers and organizational leaders contemplating performance-based incentives in social sectors