Seminar（Dept. of Trade Economics）

Theme：How to Remind People to Workout via Feedback: Evidence from a Field Experiment

Speaker：Lingfang Li (School of Management, Fudan University)

Time：2021-12-29 16:00

Address：Tencent Meeting

Language：Chinese/English

Venue: Tencent Meeting https://meeting.tencent.com/dm/ArQVh5iTCLlU 

Meeting ID：499-918-991

Password：1229

Abstract：

Physical activity is very important for human life quality. How to induce people to workout and form a habit is a long time challenge in health and behavioral studies. In this study, we design and conduct a field experiment on ex post feedback mechanism to motivate people to workout. We design feedback messages in two dimensions. On one dimension, we vary the feedback messages by whether attributing the performance to participants’ own efforts or not (i.e., effort attribution treatment), and on the other dimension, we adopt “I message” or “You message” to examine whether the deictic relational framing of the feedback matters (i.e., deictic relational framing treatment). We conduct an 8-week period longitudinal experiment using an exercising recording applet embedded in WeChat and find that:  In the short run when feedback is provided (the first 5 weeks), on average, participants in “I message” and “You message + effort emphasized” treatment groups achieve the weekly exercise goals one more time than participants in control group. But in the long run when feedback is no longer provided (i.e., the later 3 weeks after intervention), the influences of “I message” and “You message + effort emphasized” feedbacks fail to last in the long term. Moreover, the influences of “You message + effort emphasized” treatment reverse and turn to result in lower performance after the feedback is removed in the long run. We also find that the effect of feedback is stronger among participants whose subjective ability of self-control and intrinsic motivation for workout are low.