The rewards are so small you’ve Israeli-daycared me into not referring people. What do you think is the value of a new person attending EA Global for the first time? Based on TLYCS I think it would be huge, but this post implies referrals are close to worthless.
When a reward or penalty is so small, it is less effective than no incentive at all, sometimes by replacing an implicit incentive.
In the study, the daycare had a problem with parents showing up late to pick up their kids, making the daycare staff stay late to watch them. They tried to fix this problem by implementing a small fine for late pickups, but it had the opposite of the intended effect, because parents decided they were okay with paying the fine.
In this case, if you believe recruiting people to EA does a huge amount of good, you might think that it’s very valuable to refer people to EAG, and there should be a big referral bounty.
Appreciate the feedback here. Just to add on to what Robert said in the other comment:
You’re right that a successful referral is worth much more than a sticker or pin! When we were designing the program, we did consider more substantial rewards. But we also wanted to be careful not to incentivize gaming the system (which gets trickier the more valuable the reward), and make sure the program stayed focused on community-building rather than making it transactional.
That said, I’ve also noticed that people genuinely enjoy the small, fun merch/swag at EAG/x events—stickers, shirts, hoodies with EA-y designs, etc. And because the referral rewards will be unique, they might act as conversation starters or visible signals that quietly prompt others to refer as well.
It’s also worth noting, as mentioned in the post, that many people were already referring friends informally—this program just offers a small way to recognize and appreciate that effort! We’re hoping it serves more as a light prompt or nudge than a financial incentive.
Really appreciate you raising this, though—it’s helpful feedback, and we’ll keep it in mind as we move forward.
Thanks for your feedback (I lead the EAG team)! We value EAG referrals very highly and are really grateful for anyone who refers someone to us. As discussed in the post, rewards are intended “as small tokens of appreciation, not as financial incentives”. We hope they’re fun ways to show our appreciation and draw people’s attention to the fact that they could be referring people.
We want to make sure we’re not trivialising referrals though, and we’ll bear this feedback in mind. Are you suggesting it would be better to have no incentive, or a more substantial monetary incentive?
Yeah, I expect that a financial incentive would get more signups, and I even think that no incentive might be better than giving out stickers and other little trinkets.
But what I would actually want are better non-financial incentives. Instead of starting with a sticker and needing 10 referrals to get a t-shirt, 10x the quality of the prizes and have them start at a t-shirt. The prizes are so trivial now that if you think referrals are very valuable, this adds a negligible cost to the program.
The rewards are so small you’ve Israeli-daycared me into not referring people. What do you think is the value of a new person attending EA Global for the first time? Based on TLYCS I think it would be huge, but this post implies referrals are close to worthless.
That’s a new one. What does it mean?
When a reward or penalty is so small, it is less effective than no incentive at all, sometimes by replacing an implicit incentive.
In the study, the daycare had a problem with parents showing up late to pick up their kids, making the daycare staff stay late to watch them. They tried to fix this problem by implementing a small fine for late pickups, but it had the opposite of the intended effect, because parents decided they were okay with paying the fine.
In this case, if you believe recruiting people to EA does a huge amount of good, you might think that it’s very valuable to refer people to EAG, and there should be a big referral bounty.
Probably a reference to this study. https://thefilter.blogs.com/thefilter/2009/12/the-israeli-childcare-experiment.html
Interesting, I’ve lived in Haifa my whole life and never heard of it.
Appreciate the feedback here. Just to add on to what Robert said in the other comment:
You’re right that a successful referral is worth much more than a sticker or pin! When we were designing the program, we did consider more substantial rewards. But we also wanted to be careful not to incentivize gaming the system (which gets trickier the more valuable the reward), and make sure the program stayed focused on community-building rather than making it transactional.
That said, I’ve also noticed that people genuinely enjoy the small, fun merch/swag at EAG/x events—stickers, shirts, hoodies with EA-y designs, etc. And because the referral rewards will be unique, they might act as conversation starters or visible signals that quietly prompt others to refer as well.
It’s also worth noting, as mentioned in the post, that many people were already referring friends informally—this program just offers a small way to recognize and appreciate that effort! We’re hoping it serves more as a light prompt or nudge than a financial incentive.
Really appreciate you raising this, though—it’s helpful feedback, and we’ll keep it in mind as we move forward.
Thanks for your feedback (I lead the EAG team)! We value EAG referrals very highly and are really grateful for anyone who refers someone to us. As discussed in the post, rewards are intended “as small tokens of appreciation, not as financial incentives”. We hope they’re fun ways to show our appreciation and draw people’s attention to the fact that they could be referring people.
We want to make sure we’re not trivialising referrals though, and we’ll bear this feedback in mind. Are you suggesting it would be better to have no incentive, or a more substantial monetary incentive?
Yeah, I expect that a financial incentive would get more signups, and I even think that no incentive might be better than giving out stickers and other little trinkets.
But what I would actually want are better non-financial incentives. Instead of starting with a sticker and needing 10 referrals to get a t-shirt, 10x the quality of the prizes and have them start at a t-shirt. The prizes are so trivial now that if you think referrals are very valuable, this adds a negligible cost to the program.