Frontline workers' performance in prosocial tasks: evidence from a Lab-in-the-Field in Western India

Purpose - Frontline workers (FLWs) constitute a critical part of the implementation cadre within public policies, serving a significant role in the last-mile delivery of public goods and services. FLWs under public programs in low and middle-income countries like India are offered different compensation structures that range from full-time salaries, piece rate honorariums, contractual engagements, to no remuneration. Whilst the rationale for offering different compensations vary, are certain structures more successful in encouraging FLWs to perform a prosocial task? Further, can certain structures encourage FLWs to perform beyond the incentivized policy mandate? Design/methodology/approach - Investigating workers' prosocial effort within policy implementation, the authors conducted a randomized lab-in-the-field inquiry with 344 Anganwadi-based workers (workers under the nutrition policy) in western India. These FLWs were engaged to perform a novel real-effort task that was tied to different incentive structures and their performance was adjudged based on measurable quantity, effort and quality parameters. Findings - Results demonstrate that uncompensated workers invest the greatest amount of effort whilst compromising on task quality, and vice-versa for subjects receiving pay-for-performance compensation. Programs must account for policy focus when offering compensations: volunteer engagement may be counterproductive for quality focus and to the adherence to ancillary task mandates like nature/quality of beneficiary interaction. On the other hand, the distribution of products (like health goods) can rely on volunteer effort. Originality/value - The study brings together various compensation schemes operating at the field level, under one study using an LFE methodology within the context of policy implementation in India.