Promoting healthy behaviour with financial incentives: three challenges and solutions for large scale implementation

Financial incentives are a promising intervention to promote healthier behaviours and potentially reduce health inequalities. Despite robust evidence supporting their effectiveness in encouraging actions such as smoking cessation, increased physical activity, and improved diet, large-scale implementation of financial incentives in Europe remains limited. This perspective identifies three key challenges impeding their broader use: (1) difficulties in reaching the populations most in need, (2) short-lived behavioural effects after removal of the incentives, and (3) uncertainty about sustainable and equitable funding. Drawing on interdisciplinary evidence, we explore potential solutions such as tailored incentive design, strategies to prolong behavioural change (e.g. intermittent reinforcement or dynamic phase-outs), and the development of public or private funding models. We argue that while financial incentives should not replace structural health policy interventions, they can be a powerful complementary tool. A coordinated research agenda is needed to inform scalable and effective implementation.