Assured , or " sure thing , " incentives and objective behavioral assessment in particular appear to moderate incentive effectiveness .
The effect estimate from the meta- analysis suggests that financial incentives increase exercise session attendance for interventions up to 6 months in duration .
CONTEXT Less than 5 % of U.S. adults accumulate the required dose of exercise to maintain health .
Behavioral economics has stimulated renewed interest in economic-based , population -level health interventions to address this issue .
Despite widespread implementation of financial incentive-based public health and workplace wellness policies , the effects of financial incentives on exercise initiation and maintenance in adults remain unclear .
The effects of self-monitoring and reinforcement on exercise adherence.
Two behavioral techniques were assessed to determine their effects on subjects ' adherence to unsupervised exercise . The subjects were 35 moderately fit persons who had just completed an adult fitness program ( AF group ) and 42 sedentary individuals who were recruited through the campus newspaper ( NEWS group ) . Participants were r and omly assigned to one of three conditions : ( a ) self-monitoring , ( b ) reinforcement supplied by another person , or ( c ) control . All subjects were given instructions on how to exercise and asked to exercise on their own for 18 weeks . Self-monitoring subjects kept written records of their exercise behavior , while reinforcement subjects verbally reported their exercise behavior to another person who periodically administered rewards . Pre- and posttreatment tests on the NEWS group revealed no significant treatment or interaction effects . However , the reinforcement group had an 11 % improvement in predicted max VO2 and a 9 bpm improvement in exercise heart rate compared to 7.8 % , 5 bpm for the self-monitoring ( SM ) group and 5.3 % , 6 bpm for the control group . T-tests indicated that reward and SM groups improved significantly on these variables , whereas the control group did not . SM ( M = 2.07 ) and reinforcement ( M = 2.29 ) groups reported a significantly higher frequency of exercise per week than the control ( M = 1.36 ) group . The AF subjects were able to maintain their fitness level ( with the exception of a small increase in body fat ) over the 18-week period . The behavioral interventions had little differential effect on adherence by AF subjects who were already regular exercisers
Assured , or " sure thing , " incentives and objective behavioral assessment in particular appear to moderate incentive effectiveness .
The effect estimate from the meta- analysis suggests that financial incentives increase exercise session attendance for interventions up to 6 months in duration .
CONTEXT Less than 5 % of U.S. adults accumulate the required dose of exercise to maintain health .
Behavioral economics has stimulated renewed interest in economic-based , population -level health interventions to address this issue .
Despite widespread implementation of financial incentive-based public health and workplace wellness policies , the effects of financial incentives on exercise initiation and maintenance in adults remain unclear .