'When we encourage people to do things consecutively, they're focused on wanting to continue': Canadian academic on driving motivation with streak incentives and bonus structures
Canadian HR professionals looking for innovative ways to motivate employees may want to consider incorporating “streak incentives” – rewards that increase for consecutive tasks completed in apps such as Duolingo.
A new study co-authored by Katie Mehr, assistant professor of marketing at the Alberta School of Business, suggests these types of incentives may be more effective in boosting productivity, and come with a lower price tag.
“It's essentially that when we encourage people to do things consecutively, they're focused on wanting to continue, and feeling they have to continue this consecutive sequence,” says Mehr.
“And we basically argue that that is going to make it so that they're more committed to this goal, they're more committed to increasing their bonus structure.”
Mehr and her research team, including co-authors from the University of Delaware, Wharton, and NYU, tested the idea through six pre-registered experiments with over 4,500 participants.
The results, published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, showed that streak-based pay structures consistently led to greater task persistence – even when they paid workers less per task than stable incentive schemes.
The study’s deeper insight is that requiring people to act consecutively can enhance their psychological commitment to a goal; according to Mehr, the structure of streak incentives appears to reinforce a desire to continue once momentum has started, making people less likely to stop once they've started.
“When you encourage people to do things consecutively, in a row, then they become more committed to this goal of maximizing their incentives,” she says.
“It's really about increasing commitment to this goal that already exists, of trying to get the most out of this incentive scheme that you can … you're kind of like, ‘Okay, this is making me do things consecutively, and I really want to continue to go and to be committed to this goal of maximizing my earnings.’”
Streak incentives, in this context, are defined as incentive schemes where compensation increases slightly with each consecutive completion of a task, up to a certain maximum. Once the streak is broken by taking a break or switching activities, the reward resets to the lowest tier.
The inspiration for the study – the first to study streaks in the employment context – came from observing the success of streaks on consumer apps, Mehr says.
“There's obviously been a lot of emphasis on streaks, from Duolingo to Snapchat to other consumer products that incorporate this idea of encouraging people to do things consecutively, like do a language lesson every day,” she says.
“And so we were interested in whether incorporating streaks into an incentive could outperform more of a ‘traditional incentive’, which would be just like paying people the same amount for the work that they do, every time that they do it.”
The findings challenge assumptions grounded in traditional economic theory, which holds that people are primarily driven by the size of a financial reward. In the study, participants chose between completing simple paid tasks (filling in Captcha fields, for example) or engaging in unpaid leisure activities (watching funny videos).
Despite earning less in total, those given streak-based incentives completed more work than those who were paid a consistent rate per task: "That was ind of surprising, just because, again, based on economic theory, you would actually predict the opposite results,” Mehr says.
The study points to practical opportunities: employers might consider adding streak elements to existing bonus systems, particularly in environments with measurable, repeatable outputs – such as sales, deliveries, or customer support.
“I think often employers will provide small bonuses and bonus structures for employees to do tasks that might not be so fun,” says Mehr.
“This paper shows that streak incentives could be one way to structure those kinds of bonuses. And doing so, you could increase motivation, perhaps for a little bit less.”
She notes that streak incentives could be especially useful for less engaging tasks, or even for encouraging engagement to wellness initiatives.
“I think any work context where you have people having to choose between work or maybe taking a break or doing something fun, and it's somewhat of a menial task, and you're trying to incentivize them to do the somewhat menial task, this could work,” she says.
“We’ve also thought about whether this could work when you're trying to encourage people to do things that help their wellness and wellbeing. Could you give streak incentives for eating healthy or going to the gym?”
Gamification, a concept often used in consumer and educational contexts, may help explain why streaks are effective at boosting motivation. Though not a central focus of the study, Mehr acknowledges its potential in employment settings.
“Can we take elements that are really motivating from games, maybe streaks or leaderboards or things, and put them into an employment context to try and increase motivation?” she says.
“I think that's something that the literature is starting to look at, that employers are somewhat interested in – especially if you can incorporate these not-terribly-difficult-to-incorporate aspects, like streaks and leaderboards, into bonus structures or other kind of facets of what employers are looking at.”
