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Journal article
The Structure of Health Incentives: Evidence from a Field Experiment
Management science, v 66(5), pp 1890-1908
01 May 2020
Featured in Collection : UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
Abstract
A growing number of firms use incentive programs to encourage healthy behaviors, but there is little evidence about how such incentives should be structured over time. We explore this issue using a large field experiment that incentivized employees of a Fortune 500 company to use their workplace gym. We compare the effectiveness of a treatment with constant incentives over 8 weeks to two treatments that varied incentives over time. One variable treatment featured front-loaded incentives, which could, in theory, help procrastinators overcome startup costs to joining an incentive program. We find, however, that the front-loaded incentive did not increase participation on the extensive margin relative to the constant incentive and was less effective in sustaining exercise over time. The second variable incentive was designed to leverage short-term habit formation by turning incentives on and off over a longer period of time. This novel sporadic incentive showed slightly stronger effects than the constant incentive. We discuss how the nature of habit-formation processes affects the relative benefits of consistent versus periodic incentives.
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Details
- Title
- The Structure of Health Incentives: Evidence from a Field Experiment
- Creators
- Mariana Carrera - Montana State UniversityHeather Royer - University of California, Santa BarbaraMark Stehr - Drexel UniversityJustin Sydnor - National Bureau of Economic Research
- Publication Details
- Management science, v 66(5), pp 1890-1908
- Publisher
- Informs
- Number of pages
- 19
- Grant note
- LeBow College of Business 69923 / Robert Wood Johnson Foundation through the Applying Behavioral Economics to Perplexing Problems in Health and Healthcare initiative via the Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics at the University of Pennsylvania
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Economics (School of Economics)
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:000531065900006
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-85081224784
- Other Identifier
- 991019168731504721
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- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
- International collaboration
- Web of Science research areas
- Management
- Operations Research & Management Science