  Even though research has repeatedly shown that non-cash incentives can be
effective, cash incentives are the de facto standard in crowdsourcing contests.
In this multi-study research, we quantify ideators' preferences for non-cash
incentives and investigate how allowing ideators to self-select their preferred
incentive -- offering ideators a choice between cash and non-cash incentives --
affects their creative performance. We further explore whether the market
context of the organization hosting the contest -- social (non-profit) or
monetary (for-profit) -- moderates incentive preferences and their
effectiveness. We find that individuals exhibit heterogeneous incentive
preferences and often prefer non-cash incentives, even in for-profit contexts.
Offering ideators a choice of incentives can enhance creative performance.
Market context moderates the effect of incentives, such that ideators who
receive non-cash incentives in for-profit contexts tend to exert less effort.
We show that heterogeneity of ideators' preferences (and the ability to satisfy
diverse preferences with suitably diverse incentive options) is a critical
boundary condition to realizing benefits from offering ideators a choice of
incentives. We provide managers with guidance to design effective incentives by
improving incentive-preference fit for ideators.
