 Comparing the effectiveness of individualistic, altruistic, and competitive incentives in motivating completion of mental exercisesHeather Schofield, George Loewenstein, Jessica Kopsic and Kevin G. Volpp Journal of Health Economics, 2015, vol. 44, issue C, 286-299 Abstract: This study examines the impact of individually oriented, purely altruistic, and a hybrid of competitive and cooperative monetary reward incentives on older adults’ completion of cognitive exercises and cognitive function. We find that all three incentive structures approximately double the number of exercises completed during the six-week active experimental period relative to a no incentive control condition. However, the altruistic and cooperative/competitive incentives led to different patterns of participation, with significantly higher inter-partner correlations in utilization of the software, as well as greater persistence once incentives were removed. Provision of all incentives significantly improved performance on the incentivized exercises. However, results of an independent cognitive testing battery suggest no generalizable gains in cognitive function resulted from the training. Keywords: Cognitive exercises; Incentives; Social incentives; Behavioral economics; Health behaviors (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jhecon:v:44:y:2015:i:c:p:286-299 DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2015.09.007 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Health Economics is currently edited by J. P. Newhouse, A. J. Culyer, R. Frank, K. Claxton and T. McGuire More articles in Journal of Health Economics from Elsevier |
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