<p>Answering a knowledge request at the workplace can be considered a decision-making process where an employee often intentionally hides knowledge, perceiving the request as a threat. Through the lens of self-determination theory and social exchange theory, we explore the relative causal effects of six attributes: perceived organizational incentives and perceived retention of knowledge power (<i>competence need-frustrating</i>), job security (<i>competence need-threatening</i>), workplace ostracism (<i>relatedness need-frustrating</i>), affective-based trust, and workplace norms (<i>relatedness need-threatening</i>) on employee’s knowledge hiding (KH) intention during a knowledge request scenario. A randomized conjoint experiment was conducted with 330 employed participants recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk. Each respondent was asked to choose one of two organizational contexts to determine in which of these contexts they may have higher KH intentions. The contexts were a combination of the aforementioned six attributes (in a 2 × 3x3 × 3x3 × 3 experimental design), and the discrete choice task was repeated six times. The results showed that KH intentions manifest among employees through <i>external regulation</i> motivation when competence needs are frustrated by perceived organizational incentives and perceived retention of knowledge power. Other attributes were insignificant. This study contributes by highlighting that situations frustrating competence needs are more likely to lead to KH than situations frustrating relatedness needs or threatening competence and relatedness needs, and by introducing to the organizational behavior field a novel approach to studying KH—the randomized conjoint experiment method.</p>