Antonios Proestakis

TUILES: Tuesday Informal Lunchtime Seminars Fall 2014

Tuesday, October 14th

KMC 8-170

Lunch will be available at 12:15 pm. The seminar begins at 12:30 pm.

“Peer-Active: Peer Incentives for Raising Physical Activity in Children”

Antonios Proestakis

In a policy-motivated study that aims to promote physical activity and address childhood obesity we evaluate the possibility of using social networks and peer pressure to tackle the problem of childhood obesity. The effectiveness of different individual, social and random monetary incentives is tested in a school based experimental study with 349 fifth grade (10-11 years old) students who carry an accelerometer for 7 consecutive weeks. Results indicate that social incentives prevail over individual or random (baseline) ones in raising children's physical activity. Disentangling the effect of social incentives, we found that children's performance has been mainly motivated by direct reciprocity. An interesting asymmetric gender effect also arises; girls improve performance even when reciprocal incentives are induced in a non-direct way while boys increase their physical activity when participating in a "public-goods type" incentive scheme in which the induced team interactions are still direct.

Joint work with: Helen Brown, Sandra Caldeira, Benedikt Herrmann, Ankur Mani, Eugenia Polizza di Sorrentino, and Esther van Sluijs.