Paying people to exercise can be motivating, but the financial benefits don’t have to last forever to work

If exercise were in a bottle, it would be the most prescribed medicine. Just walk 10 minutes more a day to get Clinically significant results such as improved mental health, less pain and better sleep. It can also aid prevent and manage more than 100 chronic diseases such as cancer, arthritis and diabetes.

Yet many people don’t feel the benefits of just a little more exercise—around 10 extra minutes of walking a day, or an extra 1,000 steps.

There are many digital solutions that aid people achieve their fitness goals, such as fitness apps like MyFitnessPal and Noom. Unfortunately, the challenges of forming vigorous habits remain, and using fitness apps can fall into a familiar pattern that reflects the difficulty of achieving recent fitness goals.

In the case of apps, it might look something like this: the app is downloaded with the best of intentions and used for a few weeks. Gradually, the app becomes neglected and starts collecting dust on the smartphone screen, and eventually is abandoned or deleted.

Encouraging activity

As a fitness expert, I have dedicated my life to getting more people lively, and my gut feeling eventually led me to explore the idea of ​​actually paying people to exercise as part of my Doctoral researchIt all started in 2010 with a diminutive group of cardiology patients.

Almost 15 years have passed and the idea of ​​paying people to exercise has proven to make sense.

Governments AND companies all over the world, for example, they’ve been paying people to exercise for years. And it works! In a way. In shortat least.

As you might expect, paying people to exercise on a population scale can be quite pricey, which is a critical limitation. I have experienced this limitation myself, developing Carrot Awards The app was created in partnership with the federal and provincial governments of Canada between 2016 and 2019.

In 2019, due to certain financial constraints, the financial rewards for physical activity offered to Canadians for over a year through the Carrot Rewards app were withdrawn primarily in Ontario (Canada’s largest province), but not in British Columbia and Newfoundland and Labrador (the other two Canadian provinces where the app was available).

This natural variability in exposure to financial rewards led to an intriguing behavioral experiment that provided an opportunity to answer the question: is it possible to limit financial rewards without negatively affecting physical activity?

Withdrawal of financial rewards

IN our big study Among 584,760 Carrot Rewards app users, my colleagues and I found that improvements in physical activity (about 1,000 steps per day or 10 more minutes of walking) largely persisted in Ontario after the financial rewards disappeared. This was a remarkable finding, especially since many years psychological examination suggested the opposite; that people revert to basic behaviors, their “elderly habits,” once the financial benefits disappear.

One reason for this may be that the rewards for daily physical activity achievements were given for more than a year before the withdrawal began, which is probably a long enough period to habit formation.

This may also be because the Carrot Rewards app rewarded achieving realistic and tailored fitness goals — which boost confidence — with micro-rewards worth just about $0.05 per day.

Others have found that rewards as diminutive as $0.09 per day increased physical activity in more controlled clinical trial settings.

Utilize of rewards

What does this mean for those whose screens are gathering dust and have fitness apps already installed on them?

In tiny, recent research suggests that people could potentially take a diminutive dose of financial reward to augment their physical activity, and once that activity is established (usually it takes about from six to twelve months), they can be maintained in the long term with much cheaper financial support.

So practically speaking, if someone is interested in this approach, it makes sense to look for financial benefits for exercise—as an incentive, an encouragement, a spark.

Some governments have mobile health programs based on financial rewards, such as England AND AustraliaEmployers may offer financial rewards as part of expanded health benefits, which is common in United States

If neither of these options are available, you can operate commercially available fitness apps that are based on financial rewards, such as Sweatcoin Coin Or Much better. With Sweatcoin, achieving goals earns coins that can be exchanged for commercial products in the Sweatcoin online store. With WayBetter, you deposit some of your money and earn it back, and some if you achieve your goals.

While financial rewards don’t work for everyone, our research, and that of others, increasingly suggests they can be a way to stimulate and sustain a more lively lifestyle.