The Effect of Small Wins on Body Fat Loss

Summary

This 24-week-long study compares the effectiveness of two finance incentive structures for weight loss: 1) smaller rewards for achieving intermediate goals vs 2) large reward for achieving an overall goal. Target participants are male Singaporeans or Permanent Residents who are overweight and otherwise healthy.

Conditions

• Overweight

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

One large reward treatment

Participants will be awarded S$300 for reaching the PBF goal at the end of 12 weeks.

BEHAVIORAL

Small wins treatment

The cash rewards that participants will receive are capped by $300 and depend on which IGs they achieve and whether they maintain their progress at the end of the 12 weeks. Specifically, given the PBF goal, the Loss Target (LT) is the difference between the initial PBF measured at the first visit and the PBF goal, i.e., LT = initial PBF - PBF goal. Then, the IG1 is to achieve 25% of the LT, the IG2 is to achieve 50% of the LT, and the IG3 is to achieve 75% of the LT. Participants will earn $75 credits to their accounts on the programme website for reaching each intermediate goal. Also, when they miss IG1 and/or IG3, they can earn the previous missing $75 credits if they reach the IG2 and the LT. At the end of the 12 weeks, they will lose some or all the credits that they have accumulated if they fail to maintain the progress, and they will only receive the corresponding amount in cash

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Noah Lim

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Noah Lim, PhD · The Global Asia Institute, The National University of Singapore

• Alessandro Del Ponte, PhD · Institution for Social and Policy Studies, Yale University

• Ta-Cheng Huang, PhD · The Global Asia Institute, The National University of Singapore

• Aidas Masiliunas, PhD · The Global Asia Institute, The National University of Singapore

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

BASIC_SCIENCE

Masking

SINGLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

25 Years

Max Age

60 Years

Sex

MALE

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2021-09-13

Primary Completion

2023-01-31

Completion

2023-01-31

Countries

• Singapore

Study Locations