The Impact of Incentives on Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motives for Fitness-Center Attendance in College First-Year Students

Purpose. A criticism of incentives for health behaviors is that incentives undermine intrinsic motivation. The objective of this study was to determine the impact of monetary incentive provision on participation motives for exercise in first-year college students at a northeastern public university. Design. Randomized-controlled trial. Setting. Public university in the Northeastern United States. Subjects. One hundred seventeen first-year college students. Intervention. Participants were randomized to one of three conditions: a control condition receiving no incentives for meeting fitness-center attendance goals; a discontinued-incentive condition receiving weekly incentives during fall semester 2011, and no incentives during spring semester 2012; or a continued, incentive condition receiving weekly incentives during fall semester, and incentives on a variable-interval schedule during spring semester. Measures. The Exercise Motivation Inventory 2 measured exercise participation motives at baseline, end of fall semester, and end of spring semester. Fitness-center attendance was monitored by using ID-card check-in/check-out records. Analysis. Repeated-measures analyses using linear mixed models with first-order autoregressive covariance structures were run to compare motive changes in the three conditions. Results. Participation motives of Enjoyment and Revitalization associated with intrinsic motivation did not decrease significantly over time in any of the conditions, F(4, 218) = 2.25, p = .065 and F(4, 220) = 1.67, p = .16, respectively. Conclusion. Intrinsically associated participation motives for exercise did not decrease with incentive provision. Therefore, incentives may encourage fitness-center attendance without negatively impacting participation motives for exercise.