Choosing to Participate: The Effects of Message Type on Enrollment and Participation

As more services (including health services) move online, the development of communication strategies to maximize enrollment and engagement has become increasingly important. Programs like Boost (activity tracking) are increasingly used as relatively low cost ways to engage consumers and employees in activities that can improve healthy behaviors and reduce problems related to obesity and its associated diseases. While some research has shown that message framing and choice architecture can affect enrollment, these studies have usually taken place in a forced choice environment where the consumer’s attention is high. The reality is that most recruitment for most online services comes through email or other cluttered channels where attention is lower. Furthermore, engagement (or participation after enrollment) has rarely been examined, yet engagement is a major objective of services that require renewal, or for services that are designed specifically to help consumers manage their own behavior, particularly in the domain of health. We address both of these issues in a large scale field experiment where over 17,000 employees of a large American company were invited to enroll and participate in an activity tracking program (Boost) and find strong benefits to active choice along with significant differences in participation resulting from the different message frames. Focusing on a high quantified reward is most effective for getting people’s attention, but it does not yield the best outcomes for participation. Thus, marketers who want to involve participants for the long term, such as in diet and exercise programs, would be best served by using an active choice frame which emphasizes a non-quantified reward.