ENFORCEMENT OR INCENTIVES? PROMOTING SAFETY BELT USE AMONG MILITARY PERSONNEL IN THE NETHERLANDS

During a nationwide campaign to promote safety belt use among military personnel, a field study was conducted at 12 different military bases in the Netherlands. Amount of enforcement, type of publicity, and incentive strategies were varied among military bases. Observations of safety belt use among servicemen in their personal vehicles were conducted before the campaign, immediately following the campaign, and 3 months later. Safety belt use increased from 65% during baseline to 73% directly after the campaign and to 76% 3 months later. An overall 28.6% increase in safety belt use (from 63% to 81%) was observed at seven bases, whereas no changes were found at five bases (68% on all occasions). To a large degree the effects were due to a 37.7% increase among young drivers. These results confirmed that enforcement, as well as incentives, can be effective in promoting safety belt use. However, treatment effects were not systematic, thereby complicating the interpretation of the results. Implications of these varied outcomes are discussed.     

mMotiv8: A smartphone‐based contingency management intervention to promote smoking cessation

Cigarette smoking is the leading preventable cause of death and illness in the United States. We tested the usability, acceptability, and efficacy of a smartphone‐based contingency management treatment to promote cessation. We used a nonconcurrent multiple‐baseline design. Participants (N = 14) provided breath carbon monoxide (CO) samples by using a CO meter that was connected to the user's smartphone. An app (mMotiv8) housed on participants' smartphones automatically captured pictures of the CO sampling procedure to validate the end user's identity, and it prompted submissions via a push message delivered to participants' smartphones. Participants earned a $10 incentive for daily abstinence, which was added to a reloadable debit card. Overall, 4% of the CO samples were negative during baseline, and 89% were negative during treatment. Self‐reported usability and acceptability were high, and 85% of the prompted samples were submitted. A smartphone intervention could be scalable and reduce the health consequences and costs associated with cigarette smoking, particularly in rural and low‐income populations.     

App-based feedback on safety to novice drivers: Learning and monetary incentives

An over-proportionally large number of car crashes is caused by novice drivers. In a field experiment, we investigated whether and how car drivers who had recently obtained their driving license reacted to app-based feedback on their safety-relevant driving behavior (speeding, phone usage, cornering, acceleration and braking). Participants went through a pre-measurement phase during which they did not receive app-based feedback but driving behavior was recorded, a treatment phase during which they received app-based feedback, and a post-measurement phase during which they did not receive app-based feedback but driving behavior was recorded. Before the start of the treatment phase, we randomly assigned participants to two possible treatment groups. In addition to receiving app-based feedback, the participants of one group received monetary incentives to improve their safety-relevant driving behavior, while the participants of the other group did not. At the beginning and at the end of experiment, each participant had to fill out a questionnaire to elicit socio-economic and attitudinal information.We conducted regression analyses to identify socio-economic, attitudinal, and driving-behavior-related variables that explain safety-relevant driving behavior during the pre-measurement phase and the self-chosen intensity of app usage during the treatment phase. For the main objective of our study, we applied regression analyses to identify those variables that explain the potential effect of providing app-based feedback during the treatment phase on safety-relevant driving behavior. Last, we applied statistical tests of differences to identify self-selection and attrition biases in our field experiment.For a sample of 130 novice Austrian drivers, we found moderate improvements in safety-relevant driving skills due to app-based feedback. The improvements were more pronounced under the treatment with monetary incentives, and for participants choosing higher feedback intensities. Moreover, drivers who drove relatively safer before receiving app-based feedback used the app more intensely and, ceteris paribus, higher app use intensity led to improvements in safety-related driving skills. Last, we provide empirical evidence for both self-selection and attrition biases.     

Threats to Moral Identity: Testing the Effects of Incentives and Consequences of One's Actions on Moral Cleansing

Individuals engage in moral cleansing, a compensatory process to reaffirm one's moral identity, when one's moral self-concept is threatened. However, too much moral cleansing can license individuals to engage in future unethical acts. This study examined the effects of incentives and consequences of one's actions on cheating behavior and moral cleansing. Results found that incentives and consequences interacted such that unethical thoughts were especially threatening, resulting in more moral cleansing, when large incentives to cheat were present and cheating explicitly harmed others. Implications are discussed in terms of ethics training, using incentives as motivators, and the depersonalized norms of science.     

A crowdsourced nickel‐and‐dime approach to analog OBM research: A behavioral economic framework for understanding workforce attrition

Incentives are a popular method to achieve desired employee performance; however, research on optimal incentive magnitude is lacking. Behavioral economic demand curves model persistence of responding in the face of increasing cost and may be suitable to examine the reinforcing value of incentives on work performance. The present use‐inspired basic study integrated an experiential human operant task within a crowdsourcing platform to evaluate the applicability of behavioral economics for quantifying changes in workforce attrition. Participants included 88 Amazon Mechanical Turk Workers who earned either a $0.05 or $0.10 incentive for completing a progressively increasing response requirement. Analyses revealed statistically significant differences in breakpoint between the two groups. Additionally, a novel translation of the Kaplan‐Meier survival‐curve analyses for use within a demand curve framework allowed for examination of elasticity of workforce attrition. Results indicate greater inelastic attrition in the $0.05 group. We discuss the benefits of a behavioral economic approach to modeling employee behavior, how the metrics obtained from the elasticity of workforce attrition analyses (e.g., P _max) may be used to set goals for employee behavior while balancing organizational costs, and how economy type may have influenced observed outcomes.     

Exploration of likely engagement with Monetary Contingency Contracts for weight loss: a questionnaire study

Monetary Contingency Contracts (MCCs) are schemes that ask individuals to pledge money that is returned contingent on behaviour change. In relation to weight loss, this study explored likely levels of engagement with MCCs, how much individuals would be willing to pay into an MCC, and how these amounts vary under different contract conditions. Fifty-six individuals with BMI above 25 who were motivated to lose weight were recruited. The majority of participants (87.5%) indicated that they would be willing to engage with weight loss MCCs, but showed more reluctance to subscribe to pair-based MCCs which offered; (a) refunds contingent on the weight loss of a weight loss partner, and (b) ‘all or nothing refunds’ in which no reward is given for any weight loss below the target weight loss goal. This study provides preliminary evidence that individuals motivated to lose weight may be willing to engage with weight loss MCCs. Further research is needed to explore reasons for reluctance to subscribe to MCCs with certain conditions, to inform the design of future experimental studies testing the efficacy of MCCs as part of an intervention for weight loss.     

The big carrot: High‐stakes incentives revisited

Using an international dataset of about 35 000 subjects, this paper provides an empirical example of high‐stakes incentives in relation to religious practice. First, we show that incentives (based on absolute belief) play a salient role in religious performance. Second, we find that when both positive (heaven) and negative (hell) incentives are available the former are more effective than the latter. Specifically, it is shown that beliefs in heaven are much more relevant than beliefs in hell when estimating the production of religious commodities (church‐attendance and praying equations). Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reward Systems,Moral Reasoning,and Internal Auditors’ Reporting Wrongdoing

This study investigates the issue of whistle-blowing behavior that results from internal auditors discovering company wrongdoing in the process of preparing financial information. An experiment was conducted to examine whether reward systems such as cash incentives or employment contracts have an impact on auditors’ disclosing wrongdoing behavior. The results indicate that internal auditors are more likely to report wrongdoing to higher authorities when incentives are provided, suggesting reward systems have a positive effect on disclosing company’s wrongdoing or even fraud. In addition, the result reveals that internal auditors with lower levels of moral reasoning are more sensitive to cash incentives.