Sounds like classic crowding-out of intrinsic motivation.
There's a story, I can't find the page at the moment, of someone who was getting pranked all the time (his house TPed or egged or something). So he offered the miscreants $1 to do it tomorrow. He kept on doing it like this, and then a few days later, he offered a quarter. By the time he had got down to a dime, they said "there's no way we're going to do it for such a measly sum" and left.
Better sourced examples also exist: fewer citizens supported a decision to build a nuclear waste repository in Switzerland enjoyed more support if they would be offered compensation: https://www.bsfrey.ch/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/crowding-ef... p. 96 (sixth page of the PDF).
There's a story, I can't find the page at the moment, of someone who was getting pranked all the time (his house TPed or egged or something). So he offered the miscreants $1 to do it tomorrow. He kept on doing it like this, and then a few days later, he offered a quarter. By the time he had got down to a dime, they said "there's no way we're going to do it for such a measly sum" and left.
Better sourced examples also exist: fewer citizens supported a decision to build a nuclear waste repository in Switzerland enjoyed more support if they would be offered compensation: https://www.bsfrey.ch/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/crowding-ef... p. 96 (sixth page of the PDF).