Use of incentives to treat cigarette smoking

Author

Nicolette Robertson, Southern Illinois University CarbondaleFollow

Date of Award

5-1-2016

Degree Name

Master of Science in Education

Department

Behavior Analysis and Therapy

First Advisor

Redner, Ryan

Abstract

The use of contingency management, specifically with incentives, has been found to be an effective treatment for smoking abstinence (Higgins et al., 2014). Incentive-based treatments have a success rate of 30-45% with smoking cessation, therefore, there is room for improvement (Businelle et al., 2014). The purpose of the present study is to test the effectiveness of financial incentives combined with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to treat college cigarette smokers. Two college smokers received the incentive-based treatment and the supplementary ACT sessions over a 4 week period. The participants provided a carbon monoxide (CO) biomarker each weekday and self-reported the number of cigarettes smoked every day throughout the study. The monetary incentive for abstaining from smoking started at $5.00 and increased by $1.00 for each day of abstinence. The target behavior was the number of days a participant was abstinent from smoking, indicated with a CO of less than 3 ppm. One participant’s smoking rate decreased throughout treatment and the second participant's smoking rate did not decrease. The results of the study revealed that the use of monetary incentives had an effect on smoking abstinence in college cigarette smokers and the addition of ACT appeared to increase the effectiveness by a small amount. Keywords: incentive-based treatment, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, smoking cessation