Teachers’ preferences for incentives to work in disadvantaged districts: A discrete choice experiment in Costa Rica

Abstract

Designing incentives to attract the best teachers to low-performing schools has become a fundamental objective in educational equity. We analyze the case of Costa Rica, where the most experienced teachers usually choose to work in the countryʼs Central Region. We carried out a discrete choice experiment with a sample of 400 teachers in 52 schools, aiming to elicit their preferences to work at schools located in disadvantaged regions. The findings suggest that monetary incentives are the most effective to increase the probability of teachers accepting contracts in disadvantaged locations. In particular, economic bonuses show marginal effects between 8 % and 22 %. On the other hand, non-monetary incentives (working with highly qualified peers, direct access to supervisors of educational programs, and provision of material resources) are found to be important complements in the design of incentive packages. Combining monetary and non-monetary incentives, we obtain an acceptance rate to move to disadvantaged regions of more than 30 % of the teachers. These incentive designs are especially relevant in the educational systems of developing countries, which face high internal inequalities and strong financial constraints.