Attendance Overprediction

Attendance Overprediction

Reviewed by Faisal Zaidi

The finding that people greatly overpredict how often they will attend a gym in the future.

What it is

In a gym-attendance study, participants overpredicted attendance after an incentive programme ended, and they had not anticipated the rise in attendance that followed. It is drawn from work by Dan Acland and Matthew Levy (2015).

In effect

In the article on paying for gyms, the visits a buyer expects at signing set the price the buyer accepts.

What it does not say

The finding comes from one gym incentive study, so it does not say how far other buyers overpredict. It also does not say that attendance stays low: attendance rose after the programme ended, which participants had not expected.

Sources

  1. Acland, D., & Levy, M. R. (2015). Naiveté, projection bias, and habit formation in gym attendance. Management Science, 61(1), 146-160.