Commitment Contracts for Health-Behavior Change

健康行为改变的承诺合同

• 批准号: 8282208
• 负责人: Heather Royer
• 金额: $ 26.62万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA BARBARA
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-06-01 至 2014-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8282208
• 关键词: Accounting; Address; Affect; Age; Aging; American; Back; Behavior; Behavioral; Budgets; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (U.S.); Characteristics; Cognition; Commit; Contracts; Control Groups; Data; Diabetes Mellitus; Dimensions; Economics; Effectiveness; Elderly; Employee; Exercise; Fortune; Funding; Future; Goals; Habits; Health; Health behavior; Health behavior change; Heart Diseases; Hypertension; Incentives; Individual; Insurance; Intention; Intervention; Lead; Length; Life; Life Style; Longevity; Malignant Neoplasms; Measures; Motor; Obesity; Persons; Physical activity; Policy Maker; Population; Population Study; Randomized; Recording of previous events; Recruitment Activity; Relative (related person); Reporting; Research; Resources; Respondent; Savings; Self Efficacy; Self-control as a personality trait; Stress; Surveys; Testing; Time; Weight; Work; Workplace; base; behavior change; cost; design; fitness; improved; individual responsibility; innovation; insight; interest; meetings; member; novel; optimism; programs; research study; smoking cessation; success; theories

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Many serious health problems, particularly those associated with aging, can be improved by regular exercise, yet many Americans struggle to establish a consistent exercise habit. One-third of Americans today do not participate in any leisure-time physical activity. As a result, health officials and policy makers have a keen interes in interventions that can promote exercise. This proposal takes a close look at commitment contracts - an innovative, but not-yet-widely-studied incentive program. Commitment contracts offer individuals the opportunity to set a goal and put their money at stake to reach that goal. If the person meets their goal, they get their money back, but if they do not succeed, they lose the money. Behavioral economic theory suggests that these contracts are useful for overcoming issues of self-control. Additionally, this theory predicts that the desire for commitment is strongr the further in the future the commitment begins. We test these assertions by addressing the following specific aims: 1) to conduct a survey to better understand the demand for commitment contracts and their effectiveness, 2) measure the fraction of people interested in creating commitment contracts and test whether demand for them varies with contract starting date, and 3) estimate the effect of commitment contracts on exercise behaviors and the relative effectiveness of different commitment contracts. Under a unique partnership with a fitness gym consisting of 3,100 members, we propose to conduct a randomized real-world field experiment to study the effectiveness of these contracts. The population of gym members is particularly relevant for studying commitment because the purchase of a membership demonstrates a clear interest in exercising more, yet our preliminary data show that many fail to follow through with this intention. We plan to study two types of contracts: a standard commitment contract with an immediate start date and a new type of commitment contract, a delayed commitment contract with a start date one month in the future. Our intervention combines gym-use data with unique survey measures, including information on self-efficacy, self-control, and time budgeting. We use these measures to better understand how individual characteristics predict commitment contract take-up. Our findings then can be used to target these contracts to individuals who may most benefit from them. Although our focus is on improving exercise behaviors, since problems of self-control are so pervasive in other dimensions of health behavior, commitment contracts may find wider application. Relative to other types of incentive programs, commitment contracts are appealing because they are low-cost, as they do not rely on external funds, and promote individual responsibility for setting and achieving health goals rather than relying on externally imposed health targets. Thus, they may be implemented in settings where few resources are available for changing health behavior. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Many of the leading health conditions associated with aging, such as high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity, are caused in part by lack of exercise. Consequently, interventions that increase exercise are likely to lead to substantial improvements in health, particularly among older adults. This experimental research tests whether an innovative program that allows people to create a financial contract to motivate themselves is effective at increasing exercise and studies how best to design these contracts.

描述（由申请人提供）：许多严重的健康问题，尤其是与衰老相关的问题，可以通过定期运动来改善，但是许多美国人努力建立始终如一的运动习惯。今天，三分之一的美国人没有参加任何休闲时间的体育锻炼。结果，卫生官员和政策制定者在干预措施中敏锐地融合了可以促进运动的干预措施。该提案仔细研究了承诺合同 - 一种创新但尚未实现的激励计划。承诺合同为个人提供了设定目标并将其资金危在旦夕达到目标的机会。如果 该人实现了自己的目标，他们取回了钱，但是如果他们不成功，他们会损失钱。行为经济理论表明，这些合同对于克服自我控制问题有用。此外，该理论预测，对承诺的渴望在未来开始的越远开始。我们通过解决以下具体目的来测试这些断言：1）进行调查以更好地了解承诺合同的需求及其有效性，2）衡量有兴趣创建承诺合同的人的比例，并测试对他们的需求是否因合同而有所不同开始日期和3）估计承诺合同对行使行为的影响以及不同承诺合同的相对有效性。在与由3100名成员组成的健身健身房的独特合作伙伴关系下，我们建议进行随机的现实世界实验实验，以研究这些合同的有效性。健身成员的人口与研究承诺特别重要，因为购买会员资格对行使更多的兴趣表明，但我们的初步数据表明，许多人没有按照这种意图进行操作。我们计划研究两种类型的合同：立即开始日期的标准承诺合同和新型的承诺合同，延迟的承诺合同将来一个月的开始日期。我们的干预措施结合了体育馆使用数据与独特的调查措施，包括有关自我效能感，自我控制和时间预算的信息。我们使用这些措施更好地了解个人特征如何预测承诺合同的收入。然后，我们的发现可用于将这些合同针对可能从中受益最大的个人。尽管我们的重点是改善运动行为，但由于自我控制的问题在健康行为的其他方面如此普遍，因此承诺合同可能会发现更广泛的应用。相对于其他类型的激励计划，承诺合同具有吸引力，因为它们是低成本的，因为它们不依赖外部资金，并促进个人责任设定和实现健康目标，而不是依靠外部强加的健康目标。因此，它们可以在几乎没有用于改变健康行为的资源的设置中实施。 公共卫生相关性：许多与衰老有关的领先健康状况，例如高血压，糖尿病和肥胖症，部分是由于缺乏运动而引起的。因此，增加运动的干预措施可能会导致健康的重大改善，尤其是在老年人中。这项实验研究测试了一项允许人们创建财务合同以激励自己的创新计划是否有效地增加了锻炼和研究如何最好地设计这些合同。