Randomized Trial of Four Financial-Incentive Programs for Smoking Cessation

Financial incentives have been shown to promote a variety of health behaviors. For example, in a randomized, clinical trial involving 878 General Electric employees, a bundle of incentives worth $750 for smoking cessation nearly tripled quit rates, from 5.0% to 14.7%,8 and led to a program adapted by General Electric for its U.S. employees.9 Although incentive programs are increasingly used by governments, employers, and insurers to motivate changes in health behavior,10,11 their design is usually based on the traditional economic assumption that the size of the incentive determines its effectiveness. In contrast, behavioral economic theory suggests that incentives of similar size may have very different effects depending on how they are designed

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