Put your money where your butt is: a commitment contract for smoking cessation
The authors designed a voluntary commitment contract for smokers, in which participants deposited their own money in a savings account for six months and took a urine test for a nicotine marker at the end, forfeiting the deposit to charity if they failed. Of the smokers offered the contract, 11 per cent chose to take part. Those randomly offered it were 3 percentage points more likely to pass the six-month test than the control group, and the effect persisted at surprise tests twelve months after enrolment, which the authors take as evidence of lasting cessation.
The authors designed a voluntary commitment contract for smokers, in which participants deposited their own money in a savings account for six months and took a urine test for a nicotine marker at the end, forfeiting the deposit to charity if they failed. Of the smokers offered the contract, 11 per cent chose to take part. Those randomly offered it were 3 percentage points more likely to pass the six-month test than the control group, and the effect persisted at surprise tests twelve months after enrolment, which the authors take as evidence of lasting cessation.
Written from the abstract read 2026-10-27 via OpenAlex.
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Giné, X., Karlan, D., & Zinman, J. (2010). Put your money where your butt is: a commitment contract for smoking cessation. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2(4), 213-235. doi:10.1257/app.2.4.213