[gota]

I think you are confusing OPs point. If he is a volunteer moderator he gets to set his own expectations and efforts. By introducing a financial component it could disrupt his incentives, make him feel like he has to put X hours, and change the spirit/community of the people that now volunteer (but would then "work") with him

There is a name for this effect (it's no cognitive dissonance) I think - I recall reading about it in Freakonomics, wherein they discuss it in the scope of parents being "fined" for picking up their children late. The fine actually validated the tardiness as part of a business transaction - instead of being a social imposition - and actually led to more delays, not fewer

[MandieD]

Name of the effect: categorical change.

The most (in)famous example in the US is the American Red Cross following the US forces in Europe during WW2 beginning to charge a few cents for donuts that they had been giving away for free. While they were still inexpensive compared to their usual price at US donut shops, it was a huge change in the relationship that ended up souring a lot of soldiers towards the Red Cross.

[mwexler]

The early Festinger (1959) studies are basically this exact point. Getting paid or paying transforms an internally driven experience into an externally driven one (get paid or deal with fines). Later studies generalized, but the idea that "external reward or punishment is involved" changes perception of the task from internally reward driven to external, due to the dissonance of "why I'm doing it."

The economists have their own name for many phenomena that come down to the same thing that the psychologists would predict. Hence the rise of "behavioral economics" to converge the fields.

[tourmalinetaco]

> There is a name for this effect

Are you referring to incentives? Specifically turning a social incentive to a market incentive?

> The fine actually validated the tardiness as part of a business transaction

It should also be noted the parent’s monthly bill was around $380, and the fine was only around $3. So even being late every workday in a month was only an additional $60. And I’m sure some of those parents would happily spend that to be rid of their children for a little bit longer.

I do wish it was recorded whether the length of tardiness increased as well, and what the mean and mode were. Whether parents started to abuse the time or not, in effect milking the daycare for care, is an important data point as well.

[GrinningFool]

Milking the daycare would look the same as people feeling less obligated to pick up on time, now that they are compensating the provider for the extra time spent.

[Semaphor]

Looks like you pasted the wrong reply in this thread ;)

[tourmalinetaco]

No, though you may wish to check over the 2nd paragraph in the post I replied to ;D

Admittedly without quoting it does look out of place. I just edited it to fix that. Thank you!

[Semaphor]

Oh, yeah, without actually having read freakonomics, that looked very out of place ;)