One Size Does Not Fit All: Financial Incentives Needed to Change Physical Exercise Levels for Different Groups

Alberto Longo, Eileen Mitchell, Anil Markandya and Ibon Galarraga
Additional contact information
Alberto Longo: School of Biological Sciences, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK
Eileen Mitchell: School of Biological Sciences, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK

Medical Decision Making, 2022, vol. 42, issue 1, 68-79

Abstract: This study estimated the distribution of willingness to accept (WTA) for a physical activity behavior change intervention entailing the completion of 10,000 steps/day to shed light on which levels of incentives trigger a change in behavior for different proportions of the population and for more at-risk subgroups. An online contingent valuation (CV) survey was administered to 1130 respondents in the Basque Autonomous Community, Spain. The survey queried respondents about their physical activity levels and intention to engage in physical activity before presenting the WTA questions. Nonparametric WTA values were estimated for the whole sample and for subsamples of active, inactive, and overweight and obese people. One-quarter of respondents would engage with the hypothetical program even without payment, but if a monetary incentive was offered them, they would take it. The median WTA for committing to complete 10,000 steps/day is €0.23 for the full sample, €0.21 for active, €0.25 for inactive, and €0.23 for overweight and obese people. The WTA at 75th percentile is €4 for the full sample, €1.70 for active, €10.80 for inactive, and €5 for overweight and obese respondents. WTA is positively affected by a person’s lack of disposable time to increase their physical activity and, for inactive people, by their poor intention to become physically active.

Keywords: behavior change; contingent valuation; monetary incentives; physical activity; willingness to accept (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0272989X211011606 (text/html)

Related works:
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:sae:medema:v:42:y:2022:i:1:p:68-79

DOI: 10.1177/0272989X211011606

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Medical Decision Making
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().