Center for Social Innovation

Published: April 18, 2012

Identifying effective obesity treatment is both a clinical challenge and a public health priority. Can monetary incentives stimulate weight loss? In this study, participants were randomly divided into three groups: one in which they played a lottery and received earnings if they achieved or lost more than the target weight, one in which they invested their own money and lost if they failed to achieve weight goals, and one in which no intervention was made (the control group). The incentive groups lost significantly more weight. Compared with the control group, the lottery group lost a mean of 13.1 pounds and the deposit contract group lost a mean of 14.0 pounds. About half of those in both incentive groups met the 16-pound target weight loss, whereas only about 10.5 percent of the control group did. The research demonstrates that the use of economic incentives produced significant weight loss during the 16 weeks of intervention, but that it was not fully sustained. The study suggests the possible need for longer-term use of incentives.

Read the full paper here.