When it comes to volunteer work, you actually don't want to offer cash rewards because it decreases the motivation of people to volunteer - and yes, I realize w

When it comes to volunteer work, you actually don't want to offer cash rewards because it decreases the motivation of people to volunteer - and yes, I realize what I just said sounds exactly backwards from what we'd assume the case to be. When you start offering a reward, the human brain starts playing a comparative game. Instead of "I'm helping someone because I think it's the right thing to do" your brain starts doing the "I'm helping someone because I want a $25 gift card" etc. Wikipedia lists this as the Overjustificatioon effect[^1] To be fair to the original article, I think the intent wasn't to reward volunteers but to instead create a local closed market that might help an economically depressed area. [^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overjustification_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overjustification_effect