Creating Exercise Habits Using Incentives

John  Beshears; Hae Nim Lee; Katherine L. Milkman; Robert  Mislavsky; Jessica  Wisdom

Article | Management Science | Forthcoming

Creating Exercise Habits Using Incentives: The Trade-off Between Flexibility and Routinization

by John Beshears, Hae Nim Lee, Katherine L. Milkman, Robert Mislavsky and Jessica Wisdom

Abstract

Habits involve regular, cue-triggered routines. In a field experiment, we tested whether incentivizing exercise routines—paying participants each time they visit the gym within a planned, daily two-hour window—leads to more persistent exercise than offering flexible incentives—paying participants each day they visit the gym, regardless of timing. Routine incentives generated fewer gym visits than flexible incentives, both during our intervention and after incentives were removed. Even among subgroups that were experimentally induced to exercise at similar rates during our intervention, recipients of routine incentives exhibited a larger decrease in exercise after the intervention than recipients of flexible incentives.

Keywords: behavior and behavioral decision making; healthcare; exercise; habit; routine; Health; Behavior; Decision Making;

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Beshears, John, Hae Nim Lee, Katherine L. Milkman, Robert Mislavsky, and Jessica Wisdom. "Creating Exercise Habits Using Incentives: The Trade-off Between Flexibility and Routinization." Management Science (forthcoming).

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Creating Exercise Habits Using Incentives: The Trade-off Between Flexibility and Routinization

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