Incentives, Commitments and Habit Formation in Exercise: Evidence from a Field Experiment with Workers at a Fortune-500 Company

Royer, Heather; Stehr, Mark; Sydnor, Justin R.

doi:10.3386/w18580

Cited by 128 publications

(192 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…For the subpopulation who completed this extra check, average willingness to pay for the program was actually slightly higher than before: $7.18 (t 136 = 6 94; p < 0 0001), suggesting that our results were not driven by a misunderstanding. and Levy 2013, Royer et al 2012), the benefits taper off. In addition, we find that individuals are limited in their ability to self-impose temptation bundling tying rules, in line with prior findings suggesting that goal setting has some shortcomings (Burger et al 2011).…”

Section: Concluding Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…by both Acland and Levy (2013) and Royer et al (2012) in their analyses of the effects of different interventions designed to increase gym attendance. This clustered or multilevel approach allows us to take into account that we obtained multiple periods of observations of gym attendance per participant while adjusting standard errors to take into account that data points provided by the same participant are not independent.…”

Section: Stimuli Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Study participants have expressed a willingness to use "commitment devices" such as placing money in restrictive accounts that prevent premature savings withdrawals (Ashraf et al 2006, Beshears et al 2011; self-imposing deadlines with associated late penalties to prevent procrastination on coursework (Ariely and Wertenbroch 2002); and placing money on the line for forfeiture if they fail to quit smoking, exercise, or lose weight (Halpern et al 2012, John et al 2012, Royer et al 2012, Volpp et al 2008.…”

Section: Utility Utilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Limited willpower has been shown to play an important role in decisions made by individuals that affect weight gain, such as healthy eating and exercise: people intend to exercise and diet tomorrow but frequently lack the necessary willpower to act on those good intentions today (Della Vigna and Malmendier 2006, Read and van Leeuwen 1998, Royer et al 2012. On the other hand, limited willpower makes it difficult for individuals to resist engaging in many highly tempting behaviors involving indulgences that induce regret after the fact (for a review, see Milkman et al 2008).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Holding the Hunger Games Hostage at the Gym: An Evaluation of Temptation Bundling

Milkman¹,

Volpp²

2013

PsycEXTRA Dataset

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W e introduce and evaluate the effectiveness of temptation bundling-a method for simultaneously tackling two types of self-control problems by harnessing consumption complementarities. We describe a field experiment measuring the impact of bundling instantly gratifying but guilt-inducing "want" experiences (enjoying page-turner audiobooks) with valuable "should" behaviors providing delayed rewards (exercising). We explore whether such bundles increase should behaviors and whether people would pay to create these restrictive bundles. Participants were randomly assigned to a full treatment condition with gym-only access to tempting audio novels, an intermediate treatment involving encouragement to restrict audiobook enjoyment to the gym, or a control condition. Initially, full and intermediate treatment participants visited the gym 51% and 29% more frequently, respectively, than control participants, but treatment effects declined over time (particularly following Thanksgiving). After the study, 61% of participants opted to pay to have gym-only access to iPods containing tempting audiobooks, suggesting demand for this commitment device.

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Section: Concluding Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Stimuli Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Utility Utilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Holding the Hunger Games Hostage at the Gym: An Evaluation of Temptation Bundling

Milkman¹,

Volpp²

2013

PsycEXTRA Dataset

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“…Turning to the experimental literature on behavioral interventions, there is strong evidence that financial incentives can affect behavior at least while these incentives are present (e.g., Charness and Gneezy, 2009;Volpp et al, 2011;Acland and Levy, 2015;Babcock et al, 2015;Royer et al, 2015;Carrera et al, 2017). However, there has been less success in using financial incentives to increase academic performance (e.g., Fryer, 2011;Angrist et al, 2009;Levitt et al, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exercise Improves Academic Performance

et al. 2017

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Abstract:We report the results of a randomized controlled trial testing whether incentivizing physical exercise improves the academic performance of college students. As expected, the intervention increases physical activity. The main result is that it generates a strong and significant improvement in academic performance, particularly for students who struggled at the baseline in terms of lifestyle habits. We also provide evidence on the underlying mechanisms: Students who were incentivized to exercise have a healthier life style and improved self-control. Overall, the study demonstrates that incentivizing students to exercise can be an important tool in improving educational achievements.

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The effect of personalised weight feedback on weight loss and health behaviours: Evidence from a regression discontinuity design

Cook

2018

Health Economics

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Using a regression‐discontinuity approach on a U.K. longitudinal dataset, this research analyses whether personalised weight feedback resulted in individuals losing weight over a period of between 2 and 7 years. The analysis presented here finds that being told one was “overweight” had, on average, no effect on subsequent weight loss; however, being told one was “very overweight” resulted in individuals losing, on average, approximately 1% of their bodyweight. The effect of feedback was found to be strongly moderated by household income, with those in higher income households accounting for seemingly all of the estimated effect due, in part, to increased physical activity. These findings suggest that the provision of weight feedback may be a cost‐effective way to reduce obesity in adults. They do however also highlight that the differential response to the provision of health information may be a driver of health inequalities and that the provision of feedback may bias longitudinal health studies.

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Incentives, Commitments and Habit Formation in Exercise: Evidence from a Field Experiment with Workers at a Fortune-500 Company

Cited by 128 publications

References 16 publications

Holding the Hunger Games Hostage at the Gym: An Evaluation of Temptation Bundling

Holding the Hunger Games Hostage at the Gym: An Evaluation of Temptation Bundling

Exercise Improves Academic Performance

The effect of personalised weight feedback on weight loss and health behaviours: Evidence from a regression discontinuity design

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