TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Carrera, Mariana
AU  - Royer, Heather
AU  - Stehr, Mark
AU  - Syndor, Justin
        TI  - Can Financial Incentives Help People Trying to Establish New Habits? Experimental Evidence with New Gym Members
        PY  - 2017/Jul/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 10874
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp10874
        AB  - We conducted a randomized controlled trial testing the effect of modest incentives to attend the gym among new members of a fitness facility, a population that is already engaged in trying to change a health behavior. Our experiment randomized 836 new members of a private gym into a control group, receiving a $30 payment unconditionally, or one of 3 incentive groups, receiving a payment if they attended the gym at least 9 times over their first 6 weeks as members. The incentives were a $30 payment, a $60 payment, and an item costing $30 that leveraged the endowment effect. These incentives had only moderate impacts on attendance during members' first 6 weeks and no effect on their subsequent visit trajectories. We document substantial overconfidence among new members about their likely visit rates and discuss how overconfidence may undermine the effectiveness of a modest incentive program. 
        KW  - exercise
KW  - incentives
KW  - endowment effect
KW  - overconfidence
        ER  -