Habit formation, obesity, and cash rewards

Boris Augurzky, Thomas Bauer (), Arndt Reichert, Christoph Schmidt and Harald Tauchmann

No 750, Ruhr Economic Papers from RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen

Abstract: This paper examines weight loss and the formation of healthy habits through cash rewards in the context of a multi-phase randomized controlled trial involving 700 obese individuals. We find effects of monetary incentives for weight loss of up to EUR 300 on body weight during all experimental phases, including a period of a year and a half following the exposure to the financial rewards. We also find effects on healthy behavior during this follow-up phase. After the initial incentive period, we additionally provided participants who had lost a substantial amount of weight with monetary rewards of up to EUR 500. These had only short-term effects on body weight and healthy behavior. We argue that our findings are best explained by monetarily incentivized participants having formed healthy habits by the time the experiment ended and that only the speed of the transition to the new (health) equilibrium was affected by the additional rewards. Contrary to the pessimistic perspective presented in earlier empirical research on habit formation, our results suggest that a simple program relying on weight loss rewards can result in long-term health behavioral change.

Keywords: field experiment; obesity; healthy behavior; habit formation; sustainability; monetary incentives (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D03 I12 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp and nep-hea
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/179121/1/1023079232.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Habit formation, obesity, and cash rewards (2018)
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:zbw:rwirep:750

DOI: 10.4419/86788871

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Ruhr Economic Papers from RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().