Behavioral Economics Incentives for Health Management

University of Southern California

Status: Completed

Conditions: Obesity; Type 2 Diabetes

Treatments: Behavioral: Lottery Insurance; Behavioral: Standard Lottery

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other; NIH

Identifiers

NCT01823458

RC4AG039115 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

RC4AG039115-03

Details and patient eligibility

About

Incentives are increasingly being used to motivate health behavior in medical studies. Small cash payments conditional on certain health and welfare promoting behaviors have shown efficacy in both real world and experimental settings. Furthermore, in incentive studies, behavioral economics has been shown to amplify behavior change beyond what is possible with simple cash payments, but little is known about how varying incentive payment design may impact health behavior. The goal of the present study is to evaluate a new incentive payment instrument, lottery insurance, to determine its impact on adherence to the target health behavior, attendance at free exercise classes provided by QueensCare Family Clinics, a safety-net medical clinic.

Enrollment: 152 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 64 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• 18 to 64 years of age
• BMI between 25-40
• Receiving care in QueensCare Family Clinics

Exclusion criteria

• Failure to obtain exercise clearance from physician

Trial design

Primary purpose: Health Services Research

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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152 participants in 2 patient groups

Lottery Insurance

Experimental group

Description:

All participants receive a one time, $10 payment for attending the first exercise class of the 12 week session. Participants in the 'Lottery Insurance' arm receive a lottery ticket valued at $20 for attending either a Monday or Tuesday exercise class. They have the option to insure their lottery ticket by attending a second exercise class during the week on either Wednesday or Thursday. If they do not attend the second class, they have a 90% chance of winning the weekly lottery. This sequence is repeated each week over the 12 week exercise session.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Lottery Insurance

Standard Lottery

Experimental group

Description:

All participants receive a one time, $10 payment for attending the first exercise class of the 12 week session. Subjects in the 'Standard Lottery' arm receive a lottery ticket valued at $20 for attending either a Monday or Tuesday exercise class. They also receive the expected value of the insurance ($2) for attending a second exercise class during the week on either Wednesday or Thursday. They have a 90% chance of winning the weekly lottery. This sequence is repeated each week over the 12 week exercise session.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Standard Lottery