Appointments: A More Effective Commitment Device for Health Behaviors

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that simple appointment scheduling significantly improves health testing rates among high-risk men in Malawi, outperforming financial commitment devices by addressing procrastination and memory issues.

Contribution

The study introduces appointments as a more effective and reliable commitment device for health behaviors compared to financial incentives, with evidence from a randomized trial.

Findings

Appointments more than double testing rates.

Financial commitments often result in loss of investments.

Appointments address procrastination and memory limitations.

Abstract

Health behaviors are plagued by self-control problems, and commitment devices are frequently proposed as a solution. We show that a simple alternative works even better: appointments. We randomly offer HIV testing appointments and financial commitment devices to high-risk men in Malawi. Appointments are much more effective than financial commitment devices, more than doubling testing rates. In contrast, most men who take up financial commitment devices lose their investments. Appointments address procrastination without the potential drawback of commitment failure, and also address limited memory problems. Appointments have the potential to increase demand for healthcare in the developing world.