Financial Incentives Really Do Work To Reduce Smoking

Financial Incentives- Do they work?  YES!

In a Randomized Trial of Four financial -Incentive Programs for Smoking Cessation, NEJ of Med, 5/28/2015 Scott D. Halpern, Benjamin French, et al, Four incentive programs, 2538 participants, rates of sustained abstinence from smoking through 6 months were higher with each of the four incentive programs (range, 9.4 to 16.0% than with usual care (6.0%); the superiority of reward-based programs was sustained through 12 months.

    Authors’ conclusions: “There is high-certainty evidence that incentives improve smoking cessation rates at long term follow-up in mixed population studies. The effectiveness of incentives appears to be sustained even when the last follow-up occurs after the withdrawal of incentives…… suggesting that even a short incentive intervention may have long term benefits.

More recently, World Health Organization Clinical treatment guideline for tobacco cessation in adults, July 2, 2024 noted:  “A Cochrane systematic review of 17 studies ….showed that full financial interventions directed at smokers had a favorable effect on abstinence at 6 months or longer when compared with no intervention”……