Naivete, Projection Bias, and Habit Formation in Gym Attendance

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Acland, Dan; Levy, Matthew R.
• 署名单位: University of California System; University of California Berkeley; University of London; London School Economics & Political Science
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2014.2091
• 发表日期: 2015
• 页码: 146-160
• 关键词: Behavioral economics; Experimental economics; habit formation; present bias; Projection bias

摘要

We implement a gym-attendance incentive intervention and elicit subjects' predictions of their postintervention attendance. We find that subjects greatly overpredict future attendance, which we interpret as evidence of partial naivete with respect to present bias. We find a significant postintervention attendance increase, which we interpret as habit formation, and which subjects appear not to predict ex ante. These results are consistent with a model of projection bias with respect to habit formation. Neither the intervention incentives, nor the small posttreatment incentives involved in our elicitation mechanism, appear to crowd out existing intrinsic motivation. The combination of naivete and projection bias in gym attendance can help to explain limited take-up of commitment devices by dynamically inconsistent agents, and points to new forms of contracts. Alternative explanations of our results are discussed.