A Survey Experiment on Citizens’ Perceptions and Impressions of Corporate and Local Government Health Promotion Initiatives

Intervention strategies such as monetary incentives and prosocial (donation-related) incentives have been proposed to encourage physical activity (e.g., walking), and numerous experiments have been conducted to evaluate their effectiveness. However, these interventions may influence not only physical activity but also other indicators, such as participants’ subjective health status and prosociality. Moreover, when corporations or local governments adopt these interventions to promote physical activity among employees or citizens and this fact becomes publicly known, it may also affect public perceptions of these organizations.

Corporations and local governments may consider not only the expected effects of these interventions on physical activity but also their potential impact on public favorability when deciding whether to implement such initiatives. Therefore, examining this aspect is crucial for advancing the social implementation of these policies. In this study, we investigate whether public favorability toward corporations and local governments improves when people are informed that these organizations are using monetary or prosocial incentives to encourage physical activity among employees or citizens.