IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v106y2014icp75-82.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does incentivising pill-taking ‘crowd out’ risk-information processing? Evidence from a web-based experiment

Author

Listed:
  • Mantzari, Eleni
  • Vogt, Florian
  • Marteau, Theresa M.

Abstract

The use of financial incentives for changing health-related behaviours raises concerns regarding their potential to undermine the processing of risks associated with incentivised behaviours. Uncertainty remains about the validity of such concerns. This web-based experiment assessed the impact of financial incentives on i) willingness to take a pill with side-effects; ii) the time spent viewing risk-information and iii) risk-information processing, assessed by perceived-risk of taking the pill and knowledge of its side-effects. It further assesses whether effects are moderated by limiting cognitive capacity. Two-hundred and seventy-five UK-based university staff and students were recruited online under the pretext of being screened for a fictitious drug-trial. Participants were randomised to the offer of different compensation levels for taking a fictitious pill (£0; £25; £1000) and the presence or absence of a cognitive load task (presentation of five digits for later recall). Willingness to take the pill increased with the offer of £1000 (84% vs. 67%; OR 3.66, CI 95% 1.27–10.6), but not with the offer of £25 (79% vs. 67%; OR 1.68, CI 95% 0.71–4.01). Risk-information processing was unaffected by the offer of incentives. The time spent viewing the risk-information was affected by the offer of incentives, an effect moderated by cognitive load: Without load, time increased with the value of incentives (£1000: M = 304.4sec vs. £0: M = 37.8sec, p < 0.001; £25: M = 66.6sec vs. £0: M = 37.8sec, p < 0.001). Under load, time decreased with the offer of incentives (£1000: M = 48.9sec vs. £0: M = 132.7sec, p < 0.001; £25: M = 60.9sec vs. £0: M = 132.7sec, p < 0.001), but did not differ between the two incentivised groups (p = 1.00). This study finds no evidence to suggest incentives “crowd out” risk-information processing. On the contrary, incentives appear to signal risk, an effect, however, which disappears under cognitive load. Although these findings require replication, they highlight the need to maximise cognitive capacity when presenting information about incentivised health-related behaviours.

Suggested Citation

  • Mantzari, Eleni & Vogt, Florian & Marteau, Theresa M., 2014. "Does incentivising pill-taking ‘crowd out’ risk-information processing? Evidence from a web-based experiment," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 75-82.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:106:y:2014:i:c:p:75-82
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.01.020
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027795361400046X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.01.020?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gary S. Becker & Julio Jorge Elías, 2007. "Introducing Incentives in the Market for Live and Cadaveric Organ Donations," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(3), pages 3-24, Summer.
    2. Frey, Bruno S & Oberholzer-Gee, Felix, 1997. "The Cost of Price Incentives: An Empirical Analysis of Motivation Crowding-Out," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(4), pages 746-755, September.
    3. Julian Le Grand, 2008. "The giants of excess: a challenge to the nation's health," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 171(4), pages 843-856, October.
    4. Cryder, Cynthia E. & John London, Alex & Volpp, Kevin G. & Loewenstein, George, 2010. "Informative inducement: Study payment as a signal of risk," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 70(3), pages 455-464, February.
    5. Shiv, Baba & Fedorikhin, Alexander, 1999. "Heart and Mind in Conflict: The Interplay of Affect and Cognition in Consumer Decision Making," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 26(3), pages 278-292, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Christina Leuker & Lasare Samartzidis & Ralph Hertwig & Timothy J Pleskac, 2020. "When money talks: Judging risk and coercion in high-paying clinical trials," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(1), pages 1-15, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lacetera, Nicola & Macis, Mario, 2008. "Motivating Altruism: A Field Study," IZA Discussion Papers 3770, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Katharina Huesmann & Achim Wambach, 2015. "Constraints on Matching Markets Based on Moral Concerns," CESifo Working Paper Series 5356, CESifo.
    3. Nicolas Brisset, 2016. "Institutions as Emergent Phenomena: Redefining Downward Causation," Working Papers halshs-01425669, HAL.
    4. Nicolas Brisset, 2017. "What Do We Learn from Market Design?," GREDEG Working Papers 2017-03, Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France.
    5. Karen Evelyn Hauge & Snorre Kverndokk & Andreas Lange, 2021. "Why People Oppose Trade Institutions - On Morality, Fairness and Risky Actions," CESifo Working Paper Series 9456, CESifo.
    6. Deck, Cary & Kimbrough, Erik O., 2013. "Do market incentives crowd out charitable giving?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 16-24.
    7. Sandro Ambuehl, 2017. "An Offer You Can't Refuse? Testing Undue Inducement," CESifo Working Paper Series 6296, CESifo.
    8. Lacetera, Nicola & Macis, Mario, 2010. "Do all material incentives for pro-social activities backfire? The response to cash and non-cash incentives for blood donations," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 738-748, August.
    9. Kjell Arne Brekke & Olof Johansson-Stenman, 2008. "The behavioural economics of climate change," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 24(2), pages 280-297, Summer.
    10. Lacetera, Nicola & Macis, Mario & Slonim, Robert, 2009. "Will There Be Blood? Incentives and Substitution Effects in Pro-social Behavior," IZA Discussion Papers 4567, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Leonard Thomas C., 2004. "The Price is Wrong: Causes and Consequences of Ethical Restraint of Trade," Journal des Economistes et des Etudes Humaines, De Gruyter, vol. 14(2), pages 1-20, December.
    12. Nicola Lacetera & Mario Macis & Robert Slonim, 2011. "Rewarding Altruism? A Natural Field Experiment," NBER Working Papers 17636, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Philippe Fevrier & Sebastien Gay, 2005. "Informed Consent Versus Presumed Consent The Role of the Family in Organ Donations," HEW 0509007, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Anja Schöttner & Veikko Thiele, 2010. "Promotion Tournaments and Individual Performance Pay," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(3), pages 699-731, September.
    15. Alvin E. Roth & Tayfun Sönmez & M. Utku Ünver, 2004. "Kidney Exchange," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(2), pages 457-488.
    16. Gary Bolton & Eugen Dimant & Ulrich Schmidt, 2018. "When a Nudge Backfires. Using Observation with Social and Economic Incentives to Promote Pro-Social Behavior," PPE Working Papers 0017, Philosophy, Politics and Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
    17. Claudia Townsend & Darren DahlEditor & Page MoreauAssociate Editor, 2017. "The Price of Beauty: Differential Effects of Design Elements with and without Cost Implications in Nonprofit Donor Solicitations," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 44(4), pages 794-815.
    18. Allais, Olivier & Etilé, Fabrice & Lecocq, Sébastien, 2015. "Mandatory labels, taxes and market forces: An empirical evaluation of fat policies," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 27-44.
    19. Kverndokk, Snorre & Figenbaum, Erik & Hovi, Jon, 2020. "Would my driving pattern change if my neighbor were to buy an emission-free car?," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    20. Elena Cettolin & Arno Riedl, 2011. "Partial Coercion, Conditional Cooperation, and Self-Commitment in Voluntary Contributions to Public Goods," CESifo Working Paper Series 3556, CESifo.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:106:y:2014:i:c:p:75-82. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.