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IMO, the real problem is not that there is a lack of incentive to
play for a win;
the real problem is that many of the top players -- who also happen to
be the most
visible players to the chess world -- are themselves unmotivated.

There is no evidence for this. It is far more plausible that the players
have determined that playing cautiously is the *optimal* strategy given
the scoring system used in chess. That has been determined
empirically over decades and decades.

The blame rests with those who run tournaments with what
Clyde Ballard (designer of the anti-draw BAP scoring system) terms
the "1867-rules" in which draws count as half a win. That method
might have seemed sensible when first introduced to chess 140
years ago, but now we have mountains of empirical evidence that
it inflates the draw percentages and sucks a huge portion of dramatic
interest out of chess events.

And
to make
matters worse, the tendency to agree to uncontested draws has been and
is
widely accepted by those whose very function it is supposed to be to
enforce
the rules of the game -- which of course, explicitly prohibit this
sort of behavior.

It is not against the rules to play for a draw. In fact
tournament organizers reward players who achieve draws.
It is pure delusion to believe that behavior and incentives are
unrelated.

In sum, the arbiters and directors have failed in their assigned task,
and these
draw-mongers -- many of them high-profile GMs -- are simply
corrupted. They
do whatever they believe they can get away with, just as we have seen.

No. It's the system that makes draws a favorable outcome.