Financial Incentives for Healthy Eating: A Randomized Pilot Study

This is a pilot study under the IRB-approved umbrella protocol number 811698 named Penn-CMU Roybal Center on Behavioral Economics and Health. Interventions to increase the consumption of fruits and vegetables to date have shown promise, but many have limited public health impact due to the lack of scalability of their designs. Many interventions only provided information on what constitutes healthier eating or provided discounts on specific products.Other interventions were limited in generalizability due to utilization of very specific eating establishments or vending machines.By contrast, the investigators propose to examine the effectiveness and feasibility of an intervention for promoting increased consumption of fruits and vegetables by incentivizing their purchase where the overwhelming majority of food is sold: grocery stores. Collaborating with Brown's Super Stores and UpLift Solutions leadership, the investigators will enroll shoppers in this Randomized Clinical Trial using our the web-based research infrastructure called the Way to Health platform.

The primary aim of this project is to generate preliminary evidence of the efficacy of two financial incentive structures in promoting the allocation of a greater percentage of ones grocery budget to the purchase of fresh fruits and vegetables (hereafter, produce). Secondary aims are to evaluate these interventions effects on (1) self-reported consumption of produce, and (2) weight. Salutary goals of this pilot study are to document feasibility of using Price Plus cards for incentive studies, and to expand the functionality of the Way Health platform.