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

近年来，在旨在提高入学率和成绩、减少吸烟和鼓励锻炼的计划中使用激励措施变得越来越受欢迎。了解激励措施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，激励结构的一个小变化就能产生巨大的影响。积极还是消极？关于结果。在这项研究中，调查员检查的程度，涉及激励方案可以设计，以增加激励的价值，由收件人认为，而不增加提供激励的实际成本，从而增加奖励的回报。在某种程度上，这些计划的重新设计被证明是有效的，它们可以用于各种具有社会重要性的行为改变努力，从改善健康结果到减少污染，再到提高生产力和储蓄。研究建立在？心理账户理论该理论认为，要决定如何花钱，人们首先会在心里将资金分配到不同的账户，然后在每个账户内做出支出决定。 这就违反了经济学的可替代性原则，即一个心理账户中的货币应该是另一个账户中货币的完美替代品。在使用激励措施帮助人们实现目标的项目中，心理账户意味着可以通过将激励措施针对特定的、高度可取的心理账户来提高项目的有效性。两组实验提出了探索这一点？瞄准目标假说. 一些研究着眼于是否可以通过简单地重新标记或重新包装激励措施来增加对此类计划的参与，以解决人们认为特别令人厌恶的费用。 第二组研究审查是否可以通过在奖励规定的结构中引入估值过程中的非货币因素来增加参与。

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.