LONDON: In a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, attempted to study the link, if at all any, between provision of financial incentives and giving up on smoking.
A sample of 2,538 employees of CVS Caremark, the American retailer and health care company, was taken. Researchers applied five different smoking cessation techniques to this sample. Out of the five techniques, four offered different kinds of financial incentives, all worth around $800 over 6 months, while the last simply provided smoking cessation guides, nicotine replacement therapy and a behavior modification program, if the person had health insurance.
In some cases, subjects were asked to make an up-front deposit of $150, which was refundable if the participant actually quit smoking. It was noticed that people refrain from parting with their money. However, when they did, it proved to be twice as effective as simply offering a monetary reward for abstaining from cigarettes and five times as effective as giving out free smoking cessation aids like the nicotine replacement therapy.
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