Get thee to the gym! A field experiment on improving exercise habits

- Field experiment to study efficacy of individual and team incentives on exercise.
- Impacts of information about peers' gym activity are also analyzed.
- Team incentives and information feedback spur greater gym use by participants.
- These interventions also encourage people to become gym-users.
- Information feedback on peers has longer lasting effects than other interventions.

We explore the efficacy of a combination of interventions to encourage exercise in a field experiment hosted at a large public university. The experimental groups include individuals and teams and those with and without information about peers. We find that team incentives are associated with greater behavior modification (e.g. more gym visits) than individual incentives. Information on peers' gym attendance (either in a team or individual setting) also promotes more frequent gym use relative to a simple individual incentive. In addition, being in a team and receiving information on peers are effective in changing a non-user of the gym to a user. We also observe that periodic information feedback has a longer-lasting impact on gym attendance than other interventions. Our findings provide insight for any organization seeking to incentivize behavior change in the most efficient, and cost effective, manner.