Steven Levitt at the Freakonomics blog on a new study by Yale economist Dean Karlan and others on using pre-commitment devices to promote smoking cessation. The paper is available here. And here's the abstract:
We designed and tested a commitment product to help smokers quit smoking in the Philippines. Individuals who sign a Committed Action to Reduce and End Smoking (CARES) contract deposit money into a savings account and agree to let the bank forfeit their entire balance to charity if they fail a urine test six months later. Bank marketers offered the product by approaching smokers in public places. Marketers administered a short survey, provided a standard pamphlet with information on smoking’s harmful effects and how to quit, and then made one of three randomly assigned offers: (i) CARES; (ii) aversive “cues”: graphic, pocket-sized pictures of the negative health effects of smoking, modeled on Canada’s cigarette packaging mandate; (iii) nothing. 11 percent of individuals offered CARES accepted. Six months after marketing, the bank marketing team returned and administered urine tests to participants from all three groups. Subjects offered CARES were 3.1 percentage points more likely to pass the test than the control group (a 38.8 percent increase); this intent-to-treat effect rises to 4.3 percentage points for those who reported in the baseline survey that they wanted to quit smoking at some point in their lives. Treatment-on-the-treated estimates suggest that those who signed a CARES commitment were 29 and 33 percentage points more likely to pass the test, respectively.
As you might recall from an earlier post, Karlan (and Yale economist Ian Eyres) were responsible for starting stickK, a company which allows clients to put down money in the present and recover this money in the future conditional on meeting their prespecified goals.
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