Can Financial Incentives Help People Trying to Establish New Habits? Experimental Evidence with New Gym Members

Mariana Carrera, Heather Royer, Mark Stehr and Justin Sydnor

No 23567, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We conducted a randomized controlled trial testing the effect of modest incentives to attend the gym among new members of a fitness facility, a population that is already engaged in trying to change a health behavior. Our experiment randomized 836 new members of a private gym into a control group, receiving a $30 payment unconditionally, or one of 3 incentive groups, receiving a payment if they attended the gym at least 9 times over their first 6 weeks as members. The incentives were a $30 payment, a $60 payment, and an item costing $30 that leveraged the endowment effect. These incentives had only moderate impacts on attendance during members’ first 6 weeks and no effect on their subsequent visit trajectories. We document substantial overconfidence among new members about their likely visit rates and discuss how overconfidence may undermine the effectiveness of a modest incentive program.

JEL-codes: C93 D03 I12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp
Note: EH
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Published as Mariana Carrera & Heather Royer & Mark Stehr & Justin Sydnor, 2018. "Can Financial Incentives Help People Trying to Establish New Habits? Experimental Evidence with New Gym Members," Journal of Health Economics, .

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Journal Article: Can financial incentives help people trying to establish new habits? Experimental evidence with new gym members (2018)
Working Paper: Can Financial Incentives Help People Trying to Establish New Habits? Experimental Evidence with New Gym Members (2017)
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