Gain Without Pain: The Extended Effects of a Behavioral Health Intervention

We examine the extended effects of an incentive-based behavioral health intervention designed to improve nutrition behavior. Although the intervention successfully improved the target behavior, less is known about any spillovers, positive or negative, that impacted the program’s net benefit. This novel examination presents an opportunity to advance our knowledge of this important question, particularly because many theories predict that balancing behaviors in other domains (e.g., reduced exercise) can occur. Our results show a positive and long-lasting persistence effect for the treatment group, even after the incentive was removed. Moreover, we observe no negative spillover effects into related domains such as exercise, and no negative impact on customer loyalty. These results support the use of incentive-based interventions and highlight the importance, for both theory and practice, of examining their extended effects.

This paper was accepted by Uri Gneezy, behavioral economics.