Emotional responses to behavioral economic incentives for health behavior change

Abstract

Many people aim to change their lifestyle, but have trouble acting on their intentions. Behavioral economic incentives and related emotions can support commitment to personal health goals, but the related emotions remain unexplored. In a regret lottery, winners who do not attain their health goals do not get their prize but receive feedback on what their forgone earnings would have been. This counterfactual feedback should provoke anticipated regret and increase commitment to health goals. We explored which emotions were actually expected upon missing out on a prize due to unsuccessful weight loss and which incentive-characteristics influence their likelihood and intensity. Participants reported their expected emotional response after missing out on a prize in one of 12 randomly presented incentive-scenarios, which varied in incentive type, incentive size and deadline distance. Participants primarily reported feeling disappointment, followed by regret. Regret was expected most when losing a lottery prize (vs. a fixed incentive) and intensified with prize size. Multiple features of the participant and the lottery incentive increase the occurrence and intensity of regret. As such, our findings can be helpful in designing behavioral economic incentives that leverage emotions to support health behavior change.

Lottery incentives for smoking cessation at the workplace: design and protocol of the smoke-free lottery - a cluster randomized trial

“…This comparison can turn out either good or bad, but there is always the risk of finding out you have won, but that your own behavior has resulted in having to give up the prize. The financial outcome may be identical as in a traditional lottery (smoking means no prize), but the anticipated emotion and intensity are expected to differ [ 48 ]. In national lotteries, the promise of this counterfactual feedback has motivated people to prevent regret and play, more often than in traditional lotteries where if you not decide to play, you never find out what would have happened if you had played [ 47 ].…”

“…This way, participants know that they can compare the outcome of their decision to the counterfactual outcome, had they decided differently. If the alternative decision-option turned out better than the chosen option, people can feel regret [ 48 ]. More importantly, if people know in advance that they can compare outcomes, research shows that we anticipate regret and make regret-avoiding decisions [ 33 ].…”

A randomized controlled trial to evaluate a behavioral economic strategy for improving mobility in veterans with chronic pain

“…Previous studies have demonstrated the importance of physical activity in decreasing chronic pain and improving functional outcomes [ 18 – 22 ], and behavioral incentives have successfully motivated non-veteran and non-chronic pain patients to engage in increased activity [ 27 – 32 , 41 ]. This study represents one of the first to test the use of a regret lottery to motivate veterans with chronic pain to increase their physical activity.…”

“…Both arms were encouraged to meet a weekly activity goal of either (a) a 5% increase in steps over the previous week, or (b) achieving and maintaining the number of steps at 150% over baseline; no specific exercise program was prescribed. Mirroring prior studies [ 28 , 40 , 41 ], the regret lottery provided participants in the intervention arm who met either activity goal the weekly chance of winning a small ($30; 18% chance of winning) or large ($100; 1% chance of winning) incentive. Participants in the intervention arm who did not meet their goal were informed what they would have won had they met their goal.…”

The affective economy and fast fashion: Materiality, embodied learning and developing a sensibility for sustainable clothing

“…The same study also finds that medium intensity fear is more beneficial than maximal intensity. Van der Swaluw et al, (2018) nuance this a little by applying it to the negative emotions experienced when an individual fails to meet their goals. These rely on a straightforward response/stimulus nexus, whereby it is expected that the threat or expectation of something bad will prevent a particular form of action.…”