TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Nikolova, Milena
AU  - Milanova, Vilian
AU  - Wang, Feicheng
        TI  - When AI Does the Work: Does Attribution Shape Meaning and Effort?
        PY  - 2026/Jul/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 18784
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp18784
        AB  - This paper provides the first causal evidence that merely attributing identical creative work to AI rather than to a human affects how much meaning people derive from a task and how much effort they are willing to contribute. We conducted a preregistered survey experiment in nationally representative samples from the United States (N = 1,511) and the Netherlands (N = 2,117). Participants evaluated identical public health campaign slogans that were randomly attributed either to an AI system or to a human professional, allowing us to isolate the causal effect of AI attribution while holding the creative output constant. AI attribution reduced perceived task meaning modestly and made participants 13% less likely to contribute a slogan of their own, indicating lower voluntary effort. These findings suggest that AI can influence work not only by changing productivity but also by altering the perceived value of human contribution itself.
        KW  - Artificial intelligence (AI)
KW  - meaning
KW  - effort
KW  - survey experiment
        ER  -