Small Cash Rewards for Big Losers Experimental Insights into the Fight Against the Obesity Epidemic

Augurzky, Boris; Bauer, Thomas; Reichert, Arndt; Schmidt, Christoph Μ.; Tauchmann, Harald

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2566245

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…Thus, randomizing the size of incentives within a study can lead to new insights about the elasticity of responses across incentive sizes. A few studies on weight-loss incentives have randomized the size of the incentive, often by sizeable amounts, and have actually tended to find weak effects of incentive size on treatment effects (Jeffrey et al, 1983; Agurzky et al, 2012; Paloyo et al, 2015). Our study is the first in the literature on exercise incentives to randomize the size of the incentive holding fixed other features of the incentive and hence provides unique evidence on the elasticity of response to incentive size.…”

Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Can financial incentives help people trying to establish new habits? Experimental evidence with new gym members

Carrera

Royer

Stehr

et al. 2018

Journal of Health Economics

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may Can Financial Incentives Help People Trying to Establish New Habits? Experimental Evidence with New Gym Members JULY 2017Any opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but IZA takes no institutional policy positions. The IZA research network is committed to the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity. The IZA Institute of Labor Economics is an independent economic research institute that conducts research in labor economics and offers evidence-based policy advice on labor market issues. Supported by the Deutsche Post Foundation, IZA runs the world's largest network of economists, whose research aims to provide answers to the global labor market challenges of our time. Our key objective is to build bridges between academic research, policymakers and society. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. We conducted a randomized controlled trial testing the effect of modest incentives to attend the gym among new members of a fitness facility, a population that is already engaged in trying to change a health behavior. Our experiment randomized 836 new members of a private gym into a control group, receiving a $30 payment unconditionally, or one of 3 incentive groups, receiving a payment if they attended the gym at least 9 times over their first 6 weeks as members. The incentives were a $30 payment, a $60 payment, and an item costing $30 that leveraged the endowment effect. These incentives had only moderate impacts on attendance during members' first 6 weeks and no effect on their subsequent visit trajectories. We document substantial overconfidence among new members about their likely visit rates and discuss how overconfidence may undermine the effectiveness of a modest incentive program. JEL Classification:C93, D3, I12 Exercise is a prototypical example of a positive health behavior where self-control problems appear to lead to suboptimal establishment of habits. Only 21% of Americans get the recommended amount of weekly exercise 1 and many people feel they exercise less than would be optimal (e.g., Royer, Stehr and Sydnor, 2015). Many also pay substantial fees over long periods for gym memberships that they do not use (DellaVig...

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Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Can financial incentives help people trying to establish new habits? Experimental evidence with new gym members

Carrera

Royer

Stehr

et al. 2018

Journal of Health Economics

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“…Due to the large extent of medical and detailed socio-economic information asked in the questionnaires, the dataset is suitable to investigate a variety of research questions (see e. g. Augurzky et al 2012Augurzky et al , 2015Reichert et al 2015). In the following, we give some examples: -The effect of financial incentives on weight reduction and health improvements, -The potential of cash rewards to prevent weight cycling, -Heterogeneous effects among different population groups according to socio-economic characteristics, -The relationship between weight loss and sexual activity.…”

Section: Representativeness Quality and Analysis Potentialmentioning

confidence: 99%

Data from a Randomized Experiment: Financial Incentives on Weight Loss (RWI-Obesity)

Eilers

Pilny

2018

Jahrbücher Für Nationalökonomie Und Statistik

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“…Incentive programs are not unusual for health insurers, who would like their customers to engage in healthy behavior [Stock et al 2010]. However, the use of financial incentives in the treatment of obesity and overweight still raises ethical concerns [Halpern, Madison, and Volpp 2009], and its effectiveness is not well-established with respect to the issue of weight maintenance [Jeffery 2012;John et al 2011;Augurzky et al 2015].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While previous studies have shown that financial incentives are effective at inducing weight loss [Paloyo et al 2014], the evidence for its effectiveness at maintaining the lower weight is limited and not definitive [Reuss-Borst et al 2015;Augurzky et al 2015;Jeffery 2012]. …”

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confidence: 99%

Who responds to financial incentives for weight loss? Evidence from a randomized controlled trial

Paloyo

Reichert

Reuß‐Borst³

et al. 2015

Social Science & Medicine

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There is a paucity of evidence on the heterogeneous impacts of financial incentives on weight loss. Between March 2010 and January 2012, in a randomized controlled trial, we assigned 700 obese persons to three experimental arms. We test whether particular subgroups react differently to financial incentives for weight loss. Two treatment groups obtained a cash reward (€150 and €300 with 237 and 229 participants, respectively) for achieving an individually-assigned target weight within four months; the control group (234 participants) was not incentivized. Participants and administrators were not blinded to the intervention. We find that monetary rewards effectively induced obese individuals to reduce weight across all subgroups. However, there is no evidence for treatment-effect heterogeneity for those groups that were incentivized. Among those who were in the €300 group, statistically significant and large weight losses were observed for women, singles, and those who are not working (all above 4 kg in four months). In addition, the magnitude of the reward matters only for women and migrants. The effectiveness of financial incentives to reduce weight nevertheless raises sensitive ethical issues that should be taken into consideration by policymakers. In a randomized controlled trial involving 700 obese persons assigned to three experimental arms, we test whether financial incentives have heterogeneous effects over subgroups on weight reduction. Two treatment groups obtained a cash reward (€150 and €300 with 237 and 229 participants, respectively) for achieving an individually-assigned target weight within four months; the control group (234 participants) was not incentivized. Participants and administrators were not blinded to the intervention. We find that monetary rewards effectively induced obese individuals to reduce weight across all subgroups. However, there is no evidence for treatment-effect heterogeneity for those groups that were incentivized. Among those who were in the €300 group, statistically significant and large weight losses were observed for women, singles, and those who are not working (all above 4 kg in four months). In addition, the magnitude of the reward matters only for women and migrants.

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Small Cash Rewards for Big Losers Experimental Insights into the Fight Against the Obesity Epidemic

Cited by 4 publications

References 31 publications

Can financial incentives help people trying to establish new habits? Experimental evidence with new gym members

Can financial incentives help people trying to establish new habits? Experimental evidence with new gym members

Data from a Randomized Experiment: Financial Incentives on Weight Loss (RWI-Obesity)

Who responds to financial incentives for weight loss? Evidence from a randomized controlled trial

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