Small Cash Rewards for Big Losers : Experimental Insights into the Fight against the Obesity Epidemic
This paper examines the sustainability of weight loss achieved through cash rewards and, for the first time, the potential of monetary incentives to prevent weight cycling. In a three period randomized controlled trial, about 700 obese persons were...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2015
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2015/06/24711408/small-cash-rewards-big-losers-experimental-insights-fight-against-obesity-epidemic http://hdl.handle.net/10986/22222 |
| Summary: | This paper examines the sustainability
of weight loss achieved through cash rewards and, for the
first time, the potential of monetary incentives to prevent
weight cycling. In a three period randomized controlled
trial, about 700 obese persons were assigned to two
treatment groups, which were promised different cash rewards
contingent on the achievement of an individually assigned
target weight, and to a control group. Successful
participants were subsequently allocated to two treatment
groups offered different monetary incentives for maintaining
the previously achieved target weight and to a control
group. This is the first experiment of this kind that finds
sustainable effects of weight loss rewards on the body
weight of the obese even 18 months after the rewards were
removed. Additional incentives to maintain an achieved body
weight improve the sustainability of weight loss only while
are in place. |
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