Dubai offers a gram of gold for every kilo of weight lost
AU YEAH: GOLDEN NUDGE
One of our colleagues at London Business School was speaking to a doctor from Dubai about the growing obesity problem in the UAE. The doctor felt his patients had a hard time noticing they were gaining weight because their long, loose-fitting traditional garments don’t give much feedback when weight is gained. No tightening waistline to clue you in.
Whatever the cause, there seems to be a weight problem in Dubai and now the government has come up with a clever incentive: lose a kilogram of weight, get a gram of gold.
That’s about 20 bucks a pound (at current rates, for you American readers (13 quid for you Brits)), but what we like best about this nudge is that they’re not giving people 20 bucks. They’re giving gold, which is likely generating much more buzz.
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/teflon/147695972/
Yay for positive reinforcement! (If you have a sugar-daddy to fund it.)
To me this drives home the point that positive reinforcement isn’t something you can really apply on yourself. If it’s all up to you, you probably need to use a stick on yourself. More at http://blog.beeminder.com/lift
July 26, 2013 @ 4:34 pm