Word: sisson
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...success rate among users who pledge money, only $116,000 is scheduled to be paid out in 2009. (For various reasons, disbursements to charities are made in lump sums at the end of the year.) Karlan knows there are cheaters among the site's 50,000 users, and Sisson admits that she is one of them. She says she lied in 2008 about achieving her goal of losing 25 lb. in three months so she wouldn't have to cough up the $200 she had pledged to an anti-charity. Because there's such an easy out, Karlan encourages people...
After her flameout on stickK, Sisson is working hard to make good on her goal on HealthyWage. With a steady weight loss of 4 lb. in four weeks, she may win the prize money in 2010. But the even greater challenge, Volpp says, will be keeping the weight off. Little is known about the link between financial incentives and long-term weight loss. Maybe by 2011 a website will start offering cash bonuses to users who maintain a healthy weight...
...Sisson isn't the only person who feels this way. According to a 2008 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, dieters who had a financial incentive to lose weight were nearly five times as likely to meet their goal when compared with dieters who had no potential for a financial reward...
HealthyWage, which makes money through advertising and sponsorships, claims it can save the health care system $1,150 in obesity-related costs for each person who slims down to a healthy BMI. But the challenge is hardly an easy payout. Sisson, who tips the scales at just over 200 lb., will have to lose 50 lb. in a year and check in with the site about her food intake and physical activity every week. She also has to get her physician to call HealthyWage to verify her weight at the beginning and end of the challenge...
That makes it tough for Sisson to cheat, which she says is a "good thing." Last year, she signed up for stickK.com, a site founded by Yale economics professor Dean Karlan, whose research has shown that signing commitment contracts and publicly announcing a goal helps people stick to it. (The extra K in stickK is shorthand in legal writing for "contract.") Users are not required to wager any money when they sign up, but the serious ones do. Some 30% fork over their credit card information upfront and specify how much money should be automatically charged if they fail...