Health Wearables, Gamification, and Healthful Activity

Health wearables in combination with gamification enable interventions that have the potential to increase physical activity—a key determinant of health. However, extant literature does not provide conclusive evidence on benefits gamification, and there are persistent concerns competition-based approaches will only benefit those who highly active at expense sedentary. We investigate effect Fitbit leaderboards number steps taken by user. Using a unique data set wearable users, some whom participate leaderboard, we find lead 370 (3.5%) step users’ daily activity. heterogeneous. Surprisingly, were prior adoption hurt walk 630 fewer after (a 5% relative decrease). In contrast, sedentary benefited substantially from walked an additional 1,300 15% increase). these effects emerge because individuals even when small they do rank first them. harmed smaller see large leaderboards. posit this unexpected divergence could be due underappreciated noncompetition dynamics (e.g., changes expectations for exercise) but harm more ones. This paper was accepted Chris Forman, information systems. Funding: work supported National Institutes [Grant 5R01HL117757]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix available https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4581 .