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Behavioral Economics
Behavioral Economics and Health / Part 1
My kingdom for a smoke - Short versus long
Posted May 18, 2015
Behavioral economics increasingly influences practice and policy, as I, a researcher and consultant on behavior change, witness on a daily basis. In fact, it proves a powerful way to help people into the behaviors that are desirable for them, but sometimes hard to manage. The four principles in this blog series are just the tip on the iceberg in terms of the tools and insights behavioral economics has to offer. I'd love to get your feedback, and to hear about ideas and questions about other behavioral economics principles which affect patients' and physicians' behavior.
My kingdom for a smoke - Short versus long
We’ll start with a simple one. Or should I say a deceptively simple one. Which is more valuable to a person – a brief pleasure or a long life? Well, sitting in an airconditioned office or a classroom, after lunch, when our only desire is for a nap, and all our other needs have been fulfilled, nearly everyone would say a long life. And yet people (by which I mean everyone, at least at some point) smoke, drink, eat junk food, choose TV over a workout, neglect to take their meds, and do all sorts of other things that are unfit to print, obviously injurious to their long-term health.
Why? To understand this, and to figure out ways to overcome this tendency, we need to know that people are wired with a preference for short-term rewards. If I enjoy smoking, the immediate gratification I get from smoking a cigarette is always going to outbalance the longer-term benefits to my health and wellbeing that I get from not smoking one, since there’s no obvious short-term reward for doing so.
What makes this a particularly important obstabcle for health care marketers to consider is the fact that it inversely applies to most of our products. Not taking one’s meds, not exercising, not eating healthy foods are often more immediately gratifying than actually doing all those things. Combined with the fact that most benefits of healthy living are ones that you reap in the long run, somewhere down the line, after several decades of exercising, not smoking – this becomes an uphill battle.
Behavior economists call this hyperbolic discounting – where future rewards are evaluated as less valuable than if they were to be given now. This is how it makes sense to value sitting on the couch watching TV in the present more than good health in the future. Dr. Kevin Volpe at U. Penn has conducted studies showing that patients who get paid to take their medication (!) are more adherent than others, who do it 'just' for the sake of their own health.
But what are marketers to do? Surely they cannot offer cold hard cash to patients. So we as marketers, and basically anyone who wants to motivate patients to do the right thing, have to spend more time thinking about short-term rewards, rather than pounding patients with all the reasons why it makes sense for them to be compliant in the long run. We need to find ways of rewarding them now for doing so. Oddly enough, future health doesn't do the trick.
The original article appeared as : A delicate human side of marketing science - Psychological and behavioral economics principles every marketer should know. With Boris Kushkuley, Ph.D, executive VP, multichannel marketing and consulting at Intouch Solutions. originally published at
www.mmm-online.com/the-delicate-human-side-of-marketing-science/article/407902/
Pic – Penelope Cruse Smoking (I already used it in a previous blog)
