How financial incentives were x3 more likely to make employees quit smoking

Smoking is the leading preventable cause of premature death in the United States, accounting for nearly 438,000 deaths each year.¹ On top of the negative health consequences, smoking has been linked to decreased productivity in the workplace. As a result, researchers have attempted to use behavioral science techniques to nudge smokers towards decreasing their rates of smoking.

However, prior studies using financial incentives for smoking discontinuance have failed to show significant effects on cessation rates, likely due to small sample sizes and insufficient incentives, some which were as low as $10.¹ Recognizing these design flaws and the importance of smoking cessation, behavioral scientists at multinational company General Electric developed an intervention to decrease employee smoking rates.

Conducting a randomized, controlled trial, the researchers tested the effectiveness of financial incentives up to $750 for improving long-term rates of smoking cessation.¹ The success rates for incentivized employees were three-fold: 14.7% stopped smoking, compared to 5% of employees who did not receive incentives.