Abstract
We examine the effect of earned participation rewards on willingness to pay (WTP) bids in experimental auctions. Our results show that when subjects are provided with a fixed reward, they bid more than those who had to earn their reward.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Prof. Jason L. Lusk for his helpful inputs in designing the experiment and valuable suggestions and comments on a previous version of the paper. The authors assume full responsibility for any remaining errors.