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Incentives to Exercise
Author(s) -
Charness Gary,
Gneezy Uri
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
econometrica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 16.7
H-Index - 199
eISSN - 1468-0262
pISSN - 0012-9682
DOI - 10.3982/ecta7416
Subject(s) - attendance , incentive , intervention (counseling) , waist , habit , scope (computer science) , pulse rate , psychology , physical activity , demographic economics , economics , gerontology , medicine , physical therapy , social psychology , obesity , economic growth , microeconomics , computer science , psychiatry , blood pressure , programming language , radiology
Can incentives be effective in encouraging the development of good habits? We investigate the post‐intervention effects of paying people to attend a gym a number of times during one month. In two studies we find marked attendance increases after the intervention relative to attendance changes for the respective control groups. This is entirely driven by people who did not previously attend the gym on a regular basis. In our second study, we find improvements on health indicators such as weight, waist size, and pulse rate, suggesting the intervention led to a net increase in total physical activity rather than to a substitution away from nonincentivized ones. We argue that there is scope for financial intervention in habit formation, particularly in the area of health.