Love the Job... Or the Patient?  Task vs. Mission-Based Motivations in Health Care

Abstract

A large literature demonstrates that mission-based motives are a central feature of mission-oriented labor markets but leaves open the question of how mission motivation interacts with another, pervasive source of intrinsic motivation, task-based motivation.  We find that in the presence of significant task motivation, mission motivation has no additional effect on effort.  The evidence emerges from experiments with nearly 250 medical and nursing students in Burkina Faso.  The students exert effort in three tasks, from boring to interesting.  In addition, half of the students are assigned to a task where mission motivation is present:  their effort on the task generates a public good (benefits for a charity).  Two strong results emerge.  First, task motivation has an economically important effect on effort.  Second, mission motivation increases effort (in line with previous findings) for mundane tasks, but not when the task is interesting.

Keywords: public sector reform, civil service, intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, performance