Can a little competition get you walking?

You decide to walk more, but on your own it keeps slipping down the list. Does adding points, or comparing yourself with others, change how much you walk? Here are two large experiments from the United States.

What we know

The first is a randomised controlled trial called STEP UP (Patel and colleagues, 2019). It enrolled 602 adults in the US with a BMI of 25 or higher and randomly assigned them to four groups. Three groups used gamification built around a social element: support, collaboration or competition. The fourth was a control group for comparison.

Over 24 weeks, all three gamified groups increased their daily steps. Compared with the control group, the differences per day were:

• Competition: 920 steps
• Support: 689 steps
• Collaboration: 637 steps

During the 12 weeks after the program ended, only the competition group still had a difference from the control group (569 steps). The support and collaboration groups did not keep a difference once the program stopped. All three approaches helped while they were running; what differed was how long the effect lasted afterwards.

The second is a megastudy of 61,293 gym members in the US (Milkman and colleagues, 2021). It tested 54 different interventions at the same time. About 45% of them increased weekly gym visits by 9–27%. The most effective one offered a small reward for coming back after missing a workout. However, only 8% still showed effects after the four weeks.

How to read it

Both studies randomly assigned participants. That means we can read them causally: adding a competition element increased steps, and rewards increased gym visits.

There are limits, too. STEP UP studied US adults with a BMI of 25 or higher. People with different body types or living conditions may not see the same size of difference. We have also not found a similar experiment conducted in Japan.

The megastudy shows that many interventions help in the short term but fade once they end. The power of a system is strongest while the system is in place. That is why it matters to set things up in a form you can keep using.

Finally, these studies measured steps and gym visits, not income. We have not found research linking step counts directly to earnings.

A small step for today

Here is one way to apply the research to daily life:

• Create a small competition. Share weekly step counts with family, friends or colleagues. Keep winning and losing light and fun.
• Reward yourself after a break. When you walk again after a few days off, enjoy a small treat you chose in advance, such as a favourite drink.
• Keep the record going. Log “Walked 8,000+ steps” in the app, and on days you fall short, record movement with “Moved for 5+ minutes.”

If competition is not your style, you do not have to compare yourself with anyone. In STEP UP, the support and collaboration approaches also increased steps. Choosing the kind of social connection that suits you may be the approach that lasts longest.

Sources

• [A9] Patel et al. (2019) Effectiveness of Behaviorally Designed Gamification Interventions With Social Incentives for Increasing Physical Activity Among Overweight and Obese Adults Across the United States: The STEP UP Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Internal Medicine.
• [A10] Milkman et al. (2021) Megastudies improve the impact of applied behavioural science. Nature.