Journal article
Incentives, Commitments, and Habit Formation in Exercise: Evidence from a Field Experiment with Workers at a Fortune-500 Company
American economic journal. Applied economics, v 7(3)
01 Jul 2015
Featured in Collection : UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
Abstract
Financial incentives have shown strong positive short-run effects for problematic health behaviors that likely stem from time inconsistency. However, the effects often disappear once incentive programs end. This paper analyzes the results of a large-scale workplace field experiment to examine whether self-funded commitment contracts can improve the long-run effects of an incentive program. A four-week incentive program targeting use of the company gym generated only small lasting effects on behavior. Those that also offered a commitment contract at the end of the program, however, showed demand for commitment and significant long-run changes, detectable even several years after the incentive ended. (JEL D03, I10, J32)
Metrics
Details
- Title
- Incentives, Commitments, and Habit Formation in Exercise: Evidence from a Field Experiment with Workers at a Fortune-500 Company
- Creators
- Heather Royer - University of California, Santa Barbara, Mail Stop 9210, Santa Barbara, CA 93106 (e-mail: )Mark Stehr - Drexel University, 3220 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104 (e-mail: )Justin Sydnor - Wisconsin School of Business, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 975 University Ave., Madison, WI 53706 (e-mail: )
- Publication Details
- American economic journal. Applied economics, v 7(3)
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Economics (School of Economics)
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:000356954300003
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-84933533192
- Other Identifier
- 991014878742504721
UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
This publication has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:
InCites Highlights
Data related to this publication, from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool:
- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
- Web of Science research areas
- Economics