Intervention for Physical  Activity Promotion:: Risk Proneness Predicts Uptake of Deposit Contracts

Physical inactivity is related to multiple health problems. Financial incentives have been shown to be motivating factors in prompting people to increase their amount of physical activity. From these incentives, deposit contracts (DC) based on loss aversion mechanisms are suggested as the most cost-effective method. Here, personal investment is made at the beginning of the intervention, which the depositor gradually earns back through physical activity, simultaneously avoiding the aversive feeling of financial loss. However, the uptake of the DCs has been poor, for largely unknown reasons. The present study examined the role of probable predictors behind the uptake of the DC, i.e., the decision to accept the physical challenge and pay the required deposit. The two week challenge involved increasing the daily amount of walking by 120 % from the previous base level, monitored by mobile application. The participants consisted of healthy, young students from European universities. Based...Show morePhysical inactivity is related to multiple health problems. Financial incentives have been shown to be motivating factors in prompting people to increase their amount of physical activity. From these incentives, deposit contracts (DC) based on loss aversion mechanisms are suggested as the most cost-effective method. Here, personal investment is made at the beginning of the intervention, which the depositor gradually earns back through physical activity, simultaneously avoiding the aversive feeling of financial loss. However, the uptake of the DCs has been poor, for largely unknown reasons. The present study examined the role of probable predictors behind the uptake of the DC, i.e., the decision to accept the physical challenge and pay the required deposit. The two week challenge involved increasing the daily amount of walking by 120 % from the previous base level, monitored by mobile application. The participants consisted of healthy, young students from European universities. Based on previous studies, it was hypothesized that risk proneness, gender, previous levels of physical activity and related self-efficacy beliefs could predict the uptake of the deposit contract. Among the eligible participants accomplishing the pre-intervention steps, the percentage of uptake was 79 %. The results from the multiple logistic regression analysis showed that risk proneness was the only studied variable that predicts uptake. Thus, risk proneness is one potential factor to be included in DC-based interventions for young adults. However, the results should be interpreted cautiously due to limitations, the most important being biased gender distribution, small sample size and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.Show less

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Intervention for Physical Activity Promotion: Risk Proneness Predicts Uptake of Deposit Contracts