PERSonalised Incentives for Supporting Tobacco cessation (PERSIST) among healthcare employees: evaluation and lessons learned 381 11 Appendix I Incentive scheme advice The first three factors have been associated with the effectiveness of smoking cessation interventions and with reaching sustained abstinence in rewardbased programmes.5,29 The fourth factor is used as an indicator of acceptability of the deposit-based scheme. This is important because deposit schemes were expected to be the most effective, but also the least popular. The four factors were dichotomised into ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ predictor for smoking cessation in order to advise participants. Answers to the baseline questionnaires are dichotomised into positive and negative values for smoking cessation. A combination of three positive values leads to the ascending scheme, two positive values to the standard scheme and two or three negative values to the descending scheme, see table. Those willing to pay a deposit are automatically advised the deposit-based scheme. The rationale behind this is that those with the lowest scores are likely to experience the most trouble quitting, and hence arguably benefit most from higher rewards in the beginning. Those with a higher score might rather benefit from incentives as a motivator to remain abstinent, and thus receive higher rewards towards the end of the study period. Importantly, participants are, however, free to choose the scheme of their preference when entering the trial regardless of the advice they received.
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