Journal Article

Incentives, Commitments, and Habit Formation in Exercise: Evidence from a Field Experiment with Workers at a Fortune-500 Company

Royer, Heather, Sydnor, Justin, Stehr, Mark

2015

Overview

Financial incentives have shown strong positive short-run effects for problematic health behaviors that likely stem from time inconsistency. However, the effects often disappear once incentive programs end. This paper analyzes the results of a large-scale workplace field experiment to examine whether self-funded commitment contracts can improve the long-run effects of an incentive program. A four-week incentive program targeting use of the company gym generated only small lasting effects on behavior. Those that also offered a commitment contract at the end of the program, however, showed demand for commitment and significant long-run changes, detectable even several years after the incentive ended.

• Publisher: American Economic Association,Assoc
• Subject: Applied economics / Behavior problems / Commitment / Companies / Contract incentives / Control groups / Economic commitments / Economic models / Economic statistics / Economic theory / Economics / Employee motivation / Employees / Experiments / Field experiments / Financial incentives / Group incentives / Habits / Health behavior / Health care expenditures / Health economics / Incentives / Inconsistency / Migrant workers / P values / Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act 2010-US / Physical fitness / Self reports / Studies / Workplaces