The present research is intended to offer an early
contribution toward exploring the question of motivational
undermining in the context of the Make Better
Choices trial—a study testing intensive lifestyle interventions
designed to promote health changes in diet and activity using
performance-contingent financial incentives (in addition to
coaching and support from mobile technology). Based on
the self-determination theory, we hypothesized (H1) that
self-reported financial motivation (i.e., motivation derived
from performance-contingent financial incentives offered
for eating healthy and being physically active) would be
negatively related to maintenance of both health behavior
change and weight loss (after performance-contingent financial
incentives were removed). We further predicted (H2)
that financial motivation would be unrelated to initiation of
either health behavior change or weight loss.