Creating Exercise Habits Through Incentives for Routines

The investigators seek to examine the effect of incentives for routine exercise on the
development of persistent exercise habits. Specifically, the purpose of this study is to
determine whether healthy habits can be formed more effectively when people are rewarded for
repeated engagement in a given healthy behavior at a specific, routinized time each day
rather than at any time. Through a partnership with a Fortune-500 company, the investigators
plan to run a large-scale, randomized field controlled trial with approximately 3,000-4,000
participants aimed at increasing exercise rates (as measured by gym visits). During an
incentivized four week intervention period, the investigators will encourage participants to
select a two-hour window during the day when they feel they are most willing and able to
exercise. Depending on condition, participants will [a] receive no further instruction or
incentives (control condition), [b] receive a $3 or $7 bonus for each day they exercise
during the incentive period (flexible incentive condition), or [c] receive a $3 or $7 bonus
for each day they exercise if and only if they exercise within their specified "workout
window" (routine incentive condition). Additionally, participants in a fourth condition, the
social routine incentive condition, will face the same incentives as those in the routine
incentive condition, but will be required to coordinate the workout window they select with
a partner in their office. The investigators predict that the less flexible incentives will
lead to greater habit formation than flexible incentives, producing larger and
longer-lasting increases in exercise post-intervention. The investigators further predict
that coordinating with a workout partner will produce even stronger habit formation. The
investigators will collect and analyze data from participants' worksite gyms, which track
gym entries and exits, as well as pedometer data when available.

Our experiment will recruit employees at a Fortune-500 company who wish to exercise more.
Recruitment will be done through an email and poster campaign. The registration stage will
take approximately four weeks. All employees at all offices with on-site gyms will be
eligible to enroll and upon enrollment will be asked to select a partner who works in the
same office and who is also enrolling. Enrolling employees will also be asked to indicate
their preferred daily workout time (a two hour "workout window") and to provide basic
demographic and exercise-related information (e.g., gender, age, height, weight, number of
gym visits per week). If registration exceeds the target sample size (4,000 employees),
priority for enrollment will be given to employees who do not already exercise regularly (at
least twice a week). The remaining participants will be assigned to a "holdout control"
condition. Once registration is closed, participants will be assigned randomly (at the pairs
level) to one of the four experimental conditions.

Inclusion Criteria:

- Participants must be full-time employees of partner company

Exclusion Criteria: