title: Burn and earn: a randomized controlled trial incentivizing exercise during fall semester for college first-year students.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To examine the viability of monetary incentives to increase fitness-center use and maintain/improve the Body Mass Indexes (BMIs) of first-year students over the fall semester.
  
  
  METHODS
  Randomized-controlled trial with no-treatment and incentive conditions involving 117 first-year students. For 12 weeks, students in the incentive condition received monetary payments ranging from $10 to $38.75 for meeting researcher-set fitness-center use goals that were identical across conditions. Fitness-center use was monitored through electronic ID-card check-in and check-out records at the campus fitness center.
  
  
  RESULTS
  63% of incentive-condition participants met the weekly fitness-center use goals on average compared to only 13% of control-condition participants, a significant difference, p<0.001. Goal achievement significantly decreased over time, p<0.01 and at roughly the same rate in the control and incentive conditions, p=0.23. Average BMI increases over the fall semester in the control (24.2 (0.6) to 24.6 (0.6)kg/m(2)) versus incentive condition (23.1 (0.4) to 23.5 (0.4)kg/m(2)) were not significantly different (p=0.70).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Weekly monetary incentives resulted in significantly more first-year students meeting weekly fitness-center use goals. However, the increased fitness-center use by the incentive condition did not prevent an increase in BMI during fall semester.
authors.affiliation: Department of Nutrition and Food Sciences, University of Vermont, 109 Carrigan Drive, 250 Carrigan Wing, Burlington, VT 05405, USA. efpope@uvm.edu
authors.forename: Lizzy
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Pope
authors.forename: Jean
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Harvey-Berino
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D015992:Body Mass Index; D015444:Exercise / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D020446:Fitness Centers / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D015438:Health Behavior; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D012201:Reward; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D014495:Universities; D015430:Weight Gain; D055815:Young Adult