Holding the Hunger Games hostage at the gym: an evaluation of temptation bundling
Milkman, Minson and Volpp randomly assigned 226 gym users to three groups of about 75: audio novels locked in a monitored gym locker, audio novels on the participants' own devices with encouragement to listen only at the gym, and a control. In the first week the full treatment group visited 51 per cent more often than the control and the intermediate group 29 per cent more, the latter not statistically reliable. Seven-week average visits were 7.8, 6.5 and 6.1. The effect declined after the Thanksgiving gym closure, and 61 per cent of participants later opted to pay for gym-only access. Reading depth: full text; figures used are 226, 51 per cent, 29 per cent, 7.8, 6.5, 6.1 and 61 per cent.
Milkman, Minson and Volpp randomly assigned 226 gym users to three groups of about 75: audio novels locked in a monitored gym locker, audio novels on the participants' own devices with encouragement to listen only at the gym, and a control. In the first week the full treatment group visited 51 per cent more often than the control and the intermediate group 29 per cent more, the latter not statistically reliable. Seven-week average visits were 7.8, 6.5 and 6.1. The effect declined after the Thanksgiving gym closure, and 61 per cent of participants later opted to pay for gym-only access. Reading depth: full text; figures used are 226, 51 per cent, 29 per cent, 7.8, 6.5, 6.1 and 61 per cent.
Written from the full text of the paper, 2026-10-16.
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Milkman, K. L., Minson, J. A., & Volpp, K. G. M. (2014). Holding the Hunger Games hostage at the gym: An evaluation of temptation bundling. Management Science, 60(2), 283-299. doi:10.1287/mnsc.2013.1784 https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2013.1784