Are certain types of consumers more responsive to financial incentives than others?
There has been some research into the characteristics that make a consumer likely to respond to the information provided in an incentive plan (Table 5). When the aim is to encourage the selection of high performance health plans or providers, an important issue is the extent to which the information about the performance of providers or plans offered through the incentive program is considered new information.5 Studies have shown that sometimes consumers already have an informal sense of health plans’ or providers’ performance, and that the addition of a report card merely confirms those impressions. In such a case, a new report card may have little impact on consumers’ behavior.4-5 One implication of this finding is that consumers who are new to a market, and have no prior information about providers or plans, may be particularly likely to respond to information—and also to incentives.4,8,115 For all the approaches to establishing incentives discussed in this Guide, a major factor det
