Bigger rewards boost tobacco quit rate
Smokers more apt to kick the habit when offered substantial cash incentives
By Nathan Seppa
People offered several hundred dollars to quit smoking over the course of a year are three times more likely to kick the habit than those who receive counseling information but no financial reward, researchers report in the Feb. 12 New England Journal of Medicine.
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Past studies awarding cash for quitting have yielded mixed results. Some of those studies had few participants and offered small rewards, says Kevin Volpp, an internist and health researcher at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia. The new report, which he coauthored, “is the largest study that’s been done on financial incentives for smoking in a workplace setting,” he says. It also paid well.
Volpp and his colleagues teamed with General Electric to recruit 878 of the company’s employees who smoked. Half were randomly assigned to get $750 for quitting for at least nine months.