Physical Activity, Present Bias, and Habit Formation: Theory and Evidence From Longitudinal Data

Brad Humphreys, Jane Ruseski and Li Zhou
Additional contact information
Li Zhou: University of Alberta, Department of Economics

No 15-36, Working Papers from Department of Economics, West Virginia University

Abstract: We investigate temporal decisions to participate in exercise in a dynamic model featuring present bias and habit formation. The model highlights naivete about present bias and projection bias about habit formation/decay and implies that promoting participation in physical activity must both encourage the inactive to start and discourage the active from quitting as behavioral biases apply to both. Our empirical analysis using data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) develops evidence consistent with predictions about present bias and habit formation/decay and an interesting asymmetry between starting and quitting that furthers understanding of existing empirical evidence.

Keywords: present-bias; physical activity; habit formation; habit decay; projection bias (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D1 I12 L83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 10 pages
Date: 2015-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/cgi/viewcontent ... =econ_working-papers (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
Working Paper: Physical Activity, Present Bias, and Habit Formation: Theory and Evidence from Longitudinal Data (2015)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wvu:wpaper:15-36

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Department of Economics, West Virginia University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Feng Yao ().