Behind contingent cash transfer: Using violations of the Fungibility Principle to increase incentives effectiveness in behavior change

近年来，在旨在提高出勤率、提高成绩、减少吸烟和鼓励锻炼的项目中使用激励措施变得越来越流行。了解激励如何与其他动机相互作用是确保此类计划成功的关键。通常，激励结构的一个小小的改变就能产生巨大的影响。积极的还是消极的？上的结果。在这项研究中，研究者考察了在不增加提供激励的实际成本的情况下，可以在多大程度上设计涉及激励的方案，以增加接受者感知到的激励价值，从而增加激励的回报。在某种程度上，这些重新设计的方案被证明是有效的，它们可以用于各种具有社会重要性的行为改变工作，从改善健康结果，到减少污染，到提高生产力和储蓄。这项研究建立在？心理账户理论？该理论认为，在决定如何花钱时，人们首先在心理上将资金分配给不同的账户，然后在每个账户内做出支出决定。这就违反了可替代性的经济原则，即一个心理账户中的钱应该是另一个账户中钱的完美替代品。在使用激励来帮助人们实现目标的计划的背景下，心理会计意味着可以通过针对特定的，高度理想的心理账户的激励来提高计划的有效性。我们提出了两组实验来探索这种“靶向性”。假设。一些研究着眼于是否可以通过简单地重新贴标签或重新包装激励措施来增加人们对这类项目的参与，以解决人们认为特别令人反感的费用。第二组研究审查是否可以通过在估值过程中引起非货币考虑的方式来安排奖励规定，从而增加参与。

In recent years, the use of incentives in programs intended to increase school attendance and improve grades, reduce smoking, and encourage exercise has become more popular. Understanding how incentives interact with other motivations is a key to assuring the success of such programs. Often, a small change to the incentive structure can have a dramatic impact?positive or negative?on outcomes. In this research, the investigator examines the extent to programs involving incentives can be designed so as to increase the value of the incentive as perceived by recipients without increasing the actual cost of providing the incentive, consequently increasing the return on incentives. To the extent these program re-designs prove effective, they can be used in a variety of socially important behavior-change efforts, from improving health outcomes, to reducing pollution, to increasing productivity and savings. The research builds on ?mental account theory? which posits that to decide how to spend their money, people first mentally allocate their funds between different accounts and then make spending decisions within each account. This results in violation of the economic principle of fungibility by which money in one mental account should be a perfect substitute for money in another account. In the context of programs that use incentives to help people achieve goals, mental accounting implies that program effectiveness can be increased by targeting the incentives to a specific, highly desirable, mental account. Two sets of experiments are proposed to explore this ?targeting? hypothesis. Some studies look at whether participation in such programs can be increased by simply relabeling or repackaging the incentive to address an expense perceived by people as particularly aversive. A second set of studies examines whether participation can be increased by structuring the incentive provision in such a way as to trigger non-monetary considerations in the valuation process.