The Role of Self-Incentives in Smoking Cessation

Background: Providing people with incentives (e.g. money, vouchers) is an effective way of helping people to quit smoking. However, administering incentives externally may not always be feasible and the abrupt removal of incentives can lead to relapse. One possible way of overcoming these difficulties is to encourage people to reward themselves (e.g. inviting friends round). The aims of the present research are to explore: (1) whether self-incentives bring about sustained smoking cessation, (2) what kinds of self-incentives bring about sustained smoking cessation, and (3) what is the optimum rate of self-incentivisation.Methods: Seven hundred and twenty participants will be recruited across ten stop smoking services to detect a medium sized effect with 80% power and a significance level of 0.05. Participants will then be randomised to self-incentivise using different means and different schedules in four independent randomised controlled trials. The main outcome measure will be smoking status at follow-up. Data will be analysed using ANCOVA. Findings: It is hypothesised that: (1) self-incentives will be more effective at encouraging quitting smoking than control conditions, (2) providing smokers with a choice of self-incentives will be more effective than asking smokers to generate their own self-incentives, and (3) weekly self-incentives will be more effective than monthly self-incentives.Discussion: This programme of research will provide insight into a potentially valuable behaviour change technique that has to date received limited research attention.