Creating Exercise Habits Using Incentives: The Trade-off Between Flexibility and Routinization

John Beshears (), Hae Nim Lee (), Katherine Milkman, Robert Mislavsky () and Jessica Wisdom ()
Additional contact information
John Beshears: Harvard Business School, Boston, Massachusetts 02163
Hae Nim Lee: The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104
Robert Mislavsky: Carey Business School, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland 21202
Jessica Wisdom: Google, Mountain View, California 94043

Management Science, 2021, vol. 67, issue 7, 4139-4171

Abstract: Habits involve regular, cue-triggered routines. In a field experiment, we tested whether incentivizing exercise routines—paying participants each time they visit the gym within a planned, daily two-hour window—leads to more persistent exercise than offering flexible incentives—paying participants each day they visit the gym, regardless of timing. Routine incentives generated fewer gym visits than flexible incentives, both during our intervention and after incentives were removed. Even among subgroups that were experimentally induced to exercise at similar rates during our intervention, recipients of routine incentives exhibited a larger decrease in exercise after the intervention than recipients of flexible incentives.

Keywords: economics; behavior and behavioral decision making; healthcare; exercise; habit; routine (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:67:y:2021:i:7:p:4139-4171

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