Various community members have argued that steemit needs to adjust the reward structure, but not many have articulated why it is so important to get it right. My last post was about how Steemit has had a positive effect on me, but I do think there is a real danger on this website...
I think we need to talk as a community about a psychological phenomenon called the Overjustification effect.
The effect is basically the phenomenon of an external reward reducing intrinsic/internal motivation to perform an action.
This is something that needs addressing here on Steemit: The effect of rewarding users for actions (posting content and upvoting) which they previously did for free is potentially damaging because it shifts motivation from instrinsic to extrinsic. If rewards are too small, any interest in the activity will be lost. Some studies (citation needed) have found that if this is the case, intrinsic motivation does not necessarily return.
What I’m saying is that if we don’t get minnow rewards right (and many here have already argued that we haven’t yet), then we risk users being turned off not just steemit, but any form of blogging/posting, and that would be really sad.
If we take a closer look at a study which looked at the impact of financial rewards on volunteering, you’ll see what I mean. Bruno and Goette (1999) have shown that financial rewards reduce intrinsic motivation. If large enough, the reward/extrinsic motivation can compensate for this effect, but if the reward is too small, it doesn’t compensate for the loss of intrinsic motivation, and overall engagement declines. For example some Swiss researchers found that financial rewards for volunteers actually led to a reduction in the number of hours people were volunteering (rewarded volunteers worked less than non-rewarded volunteers).
If we don’t reward minnows (like me) adequately for their hard work, then they will disengage.