How Do Habits Form? Experimental Evidence from Health Screenings
We develop a framework for distinguishing between two competing mechanisms of habit formation and apply it to a three-year randomized experiment on annual health screenings among 4,799 university employees. Annually re-randomized incentives generate exogenous variation in early, late, and repeated screening, allowing us to test whether habits are strengthened by additional consumption or instead form discretely once consumption crosses a threshold. We find strong habit formation from initial exposure: completing a first screening raised subsequent screening rates by 32.4–36.1 percentage points (90%–111%). In contrast, completing a second screening had no detectable additional effect. Our results reject reinforcement models, including addiction, which predict repeated participation should strengthen the habit, and instead support a threshold model in which a single exposure is sufficient to establish and sustain the habit. Observational estimates imply the opposite conclusion, showing the value of rigorous research design in identifying mechanisms of habit formation.
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Copy CitationDamon Jones, David Molitor, and Julian Reif, "How Do Habits Form? Experimental Evidence from Health Screenings," NBER Working Paper 32745 (2024), https://doi.org/10.3386/w32745.Download Citation
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