Incentives for Preventative Health Care: Increasing Completion of Health Risk Assessments

The purpose of this study is to understand using incentives to encourage employees to increase participation in an aspect of a corporate wellness program - filling out health risk assessments. This study will test whether lottery-linked incentives are more effective than guaranteed incentives in encouraging people to fill out health risk assessments. This study will be run in an employer setting in which rates of health risk assessment completion are suboptimal. This study would be conducted within a workplace setting in which the firm is divided into a number of geographically situated and functionally related subunits. The investigators will run a "complete your health risk assessment now!" program for 4 weeks. Each work unit will obtain a symbol. Every week, one symbol will be randomly drawn, publicly announced, and anyone in that work unit at the firm who has received their preventive screening would receive a $100 prize. In addition, if all of employees in that unit have completed their forms, then the prize will be increased to $125. The investigators expect this condition to result in greater compliance compared to a control condition in which employees would receive weekly reminders and a direct payment of a $25 gift card for completing the form at anytime during the 4 weeks of the study. This is analogous to direct payments that have been used by insurers to encourage completion of such forms in other contexts.