A starting point for comparing incentive models

Having outlined the different archetypal models in our prior blog, it’s time to compare them. The table below shows the comparisons we undertook during an internal brainstorming session, showing how the models stack up against one another across a variety of metrics:

Another way of thinking about this is via decisions. Deciding on what you do or don’t want with respect to a certain feature will inevitably lead you towards certain models over others. To illustrate, here’s a decision tree we put together around financing and payment:

Now of course, payment isn't the only thing we care about. There are other important considerations such as:

• Feasibility (lack of feasibility is why we've already greyed out mandating and commons based peer production models, for example)
• The amount of money to creators and thus the amount created
• Acccess to the results
• Ease of coordinating contributions

Specific contexts will likely also carry their own important factors beyond these. Model selection is about weighing these against one another, and making a decision based on prioritisation. A future blog will offer a more detailed breakdown of how these models compare across key metrics, but in the meantime our report on mechanism design for environmental data sharing also outlines some of the advantages and disadvantages of each model.