Increasing Recruitment and Engagement with Time-Limited Financial Incentives

The literature indicates external deadlines and financial incentives undermine motivation and compliance. We present lab and field experiments that test the effectiveness of time-limited incentive programs, in particular, one we call “declining financial incentive” in which the incentive declines over time. Compared to the control condition (no financial incentive with no deadlines to enroll), more participants enrolled in the time-limited incentive programs, especially in the higher incentives and declining incentive conditions (studies 1 and 2). These effects occurred because participants in the declining incentive condition were engaged in anticipatory regret aversion. Variations in financial incentive levels and format did not produce different decay in engagement rates over a 1-year period. Declining financial incentives are recommended to increase enrollment and postenrollment engagement.