Why Don’t We Sleep Enough? A Field Experiment among College Students

Mallory Avery, Osea Giuntella and Peiran Jiao
Additional contact information
Osea Giuntella: University of Pittsburgh, IZA, and NBER
Peiran Jiao: Maastricht University and Nuffield College

The Review of Economics and Statistics, 2025, vol. 107, issue 1, 65-77

Abstract: This study investigates the mechanisms affecting sleep choice and explores whether commitment devices and monetary incentives can be used to promote healthier sleep habits. To this end, we conducted a field experiment with college students, providing them incentives to sleep and collecting data from wearable activity trackers, surveys, and time-use diaries. Monetary incentives were effective in increasing sleep duration with some evidence of persistence after the incentive was removed. We uncover evidence of demand for commitment. Our results are consistent with partially sophisticated time-inconsistent preferences and overconfidence and have implications for the effectiveness of information interventions on sleep choice.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1162/rest_a_01242
Access to PDF is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Why Don't We Sleep Enough? A Field Experiment among College Students (2019)
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:tpr:restat:v:107:y:2025:i:1:p:65-77

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://mitpressjour ... rnal/?issn=0034-6535

Access Statistics for this article

The Review of Economics and Statistics is currently edited by Pierre Azoulay, Olivier Coibion, Will Dobbie, Raymond Fisman, Benjamin R. Handel, Brian A. Jacob, Kareen Rozen, Xiaoxia Shi, Tavneet Suri and Yi Xu

More articles in The Review of Economics and Statistics from MIT Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by The MIT Press ().