Wanting Ever More: Acquisition Procedure Motivates Continued Reward Acquisition

Abstract

What drives consumers to invest repeated efforts to acquire rewards? This research shows that the temporal arrangement of effort investment and reward dispensation can affect people’s motivation to earn more rewards. Two procedures for acquiring rewards are examined: a piecemeal procedure, whereby rewards are acquired gradually through repeated small efforts, and a lump-sum procedure, whereby a number of rewards are acquired all at once after a longer period of work. Holding constant the total quantity of acquired rewards and the effort–reward exchange rate, the piecemeal procedure is more motivating than the lump-sum procedure (experiment 1) because the former results in a greater sense of achievement (experiment 2). If the sense of achievement is curtailed by preventing people from accumulating the rewards they have earned (experiment 3), by providing rewards that are different from the already-earned rewards (experiment 4), or by breaking the association between effort and rewards (experiment 5), the piecemeal procedure is no more motivating than the lump-sum procedure. The effect is also diminished when consumers are satiated with the rewards (experiment 6). Taken together, these experiments provide converging evidence that acquiring rewards piece by piece motivates people to continue earning them.

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