Gain Without Pain: The Extended Effects of a Behavioral Health Intervention

We examine the extended effects of an incentive-based behavioral health intervention that financially penalized shoppers who failed to improve the nutritional quality of their grocery basket. While the intervention successfully motivated the target behavior, less is known about any persistence and spillover effects that could lead to worse behavior in other domains. Because many theories predict that such balancing behaviors can occur, but rarely examine them in field experiments, this novel examination of the data presents an opportunity to advance our knowledge. Our results show that the treatment group showed positive persistence effects even after the penalty was removed, no negative spillover effects into related domains such as exercise during the intervention, and no negative impact on customer loyalty as a result of a financial penalty. These results highlight the importance of examining the extended effects of behavioral field interventions for both theory and practice.