Incentives effective for smoking cessation

Wednesday 24 August 2016

Brian McAvoy

PEARLS No.

484

Clinical question

How effective are incentives and contingency management programmes in achieving long-term smoking cessation (>six months)?

Bottom line

Incentives appear to boost cessation rates while they are in place. The two trials recruited from work sites that achieved sustained success rates beyond the reward schedule, concentrated their resources into substantial cash payments for abstinence. Deposit-refund trials can suffer from relatively low rates of uptake, but those who do sign up and contribute their own money may achieve higher quit rates than reward-only participants. Incentive schemes conducted among pregnant smokers improved the cessation rates, both at the end-of-pregnancy and at post-partum assessments.

Caveat

Such an incentive approach may only be feasible where independently-funded smoking cessation programmes are already available, and within a relatively affluent and educated population.

Context

Material or financial incentives are widely used in an attempt to precipitate or reinforce behaviour change, including smoking cessation. They operate in workplaces, in clinics and hospitals, and to a lesser extent within community programmes.

Cochrane Systematic Review

Cahill K et al. Incentives for smoking cessation. Cochrane Reviews, 2015, Issue 5. Art. No.: CD004307.DOI: 10.1002/14651858. CD004307.pub5. This review contains 21 studies involving more than 8,400 participants.

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