For much of the last year, my wife's constant companion has been a work-issued pedometer. She wears it everywhere we walk--on hikes, to dinner and to events. ("Can you please take your pedometer off when you come to bed, dear?")
She has bought completely into her employer's walking-based wellness program. The pedometer tracks all her steps and uploads them via computer to a program. Those steps can be traded for incentives--from restaurant and store gift cards to $500 cash. She hit the latter level in October and turned her 2011 walking effort into Christmas gifts for the family.
Watching her strategically place the pedometer on an outfit for a nighttime wedding ("You get a lot of steps dancing.") got me wondering: Does paying people to exercise really work?
I've worked for two companies that reimbursed gym membership fees, but I've never been offered cash in exchange for achieving a certain goal. Would this kind of incentive help me exercise more and maybe lose weight?
Most people already have plenty of reason to exercise. Studies have found that people exercise to improve their health, lose weight and feel better--both physically and mentally. And many exercise regularly without financial incentive.
But those motivations aren't enough for everyone. Some need cold, hard cash. My wife, for example, works out regularly, but she's worked out more in the last 12 months than in any period since we married a decade ago.
Quite a few studies back up this example. In one 2009 study in the journal Econometrica, economists found that people who didn't often go to the gym responded well to financial incentives. In fact, those participants receiving the highest inducement (up to $200 for eight gym visits) were twice as likely to exercise as those participants who had received no incentive.
Of course, I'd go to a gym if someone paid me that much, you might be thinking. But an interesting thing happened when the financial incentive was removed: Participants kept going. How long the effect lasts is anyone's guess. The studies I looked at stopped measuring the participants' exercise habits a few weeks or months after the incentive ended. Researchers weren't able to conclude if long-term habits were affected.
The Econometrica authors say the incentive scheme must also be designed right to work. "Paying people either too little or even too much can result in worse performance than not paying at all," they wrote in a New York Times discussion.
The program designed by my wife's employer is apparently working--offering an ongoing incentive that's just right, at least for her. She keeps wearing her pedometer and getting her steps. Maybe next year she'll pay me to walk with her.
