Anyone who’s ever tried to quit smoking knows how hard it is to do. In fact, the American Cancer Society reports that only about four to seven percent of smokers are able to quit without medicine or other help.
That’s why this new research published in the New England Journal of Medicine is so significant. Scientists discovered that people who followed a penalty-based program to quit smoking were twice as likely to be successful as those who did a more traditional reward-based program.
More than 2,500 CVS employees, who smoked, were assigned to one of two smoking-cessation programs: a reward-based one, that offered $800 to those who successfully quit in six months; and a penalty-based one, where participants had to hand over a $150 deposit, but would earn $640 in reward money for quitting in six months. If these participants failed, they would lose the deposit.
While both types of programs were more successful in getting smokers to quit than people who tried to quit on their own, the penalty program nearly doubled the chances of success.
Many employers these days offer some sort of reward-based smoking-cessation program; we’re hoping that these new findings may help encourage them to consider a more effective program.
Relevant source:
Curated from The New York Times
