Abstract
Less than 5% of adults meet the CDC recommendation of 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity per week. Contingencies that promote competing problematic behaviors make it difficult for individuals to engage in healthy behaviors. Thus, strategies in which immediate consequences for healthy behaviors are contrived to compete with problematic contingencies may be effective in increasing behaviors that produce positive cumulative effects. The aim of this study was to compare the effectiveness of negative reinforcement contingency contracts and feedback with a goal setting with feedback intervention. Individualized goals were determined by increasing each participants’ average steps during a screening period by a minimum of 20-25% in Experiment 1, and a minimum of 50% in Experiment 2. Results indicated that participants met their daily step goals more often and had higher average daily step counts during the contract condition. These findings support the use of negative reinforcement monetary contracts in physical activity interventions.