Innovative Behavioral Economics Incentives Strategies for Health

[INTRODUCTION]

The success of combination HIV prevention efforts, including HIV treatment as prevention, hinges on universal, routine HIV testing with linkage to care and antiretroviral treatment initiation after HIV diagnosis. The proposed study will evaluate the comparative effectiveness and sustainability of innovative incentive strategies, informed directly by behavioral economics and decision psychology, to promote HIV testing among men and HIV and treatment among HIV-infected adults in rural Uganda.

[OBJECTIVES]

AIM 1: Adult men living in the study communities in rural Uganda (N=3,000) will be randomized to one of three (fixed, loss aversion, and lottery) incentive approaches and different incentive amounts that encourage HIV testing. The hypothesis is that lottery and loss aversion incentives will result in significantly higher testing uptake than fixed incentives. The investigators also hypothesize that the proportion of testers in each arm who are HIV-infected (secondary outcome) will be highest with lottery-based incentives. In sub-samples of men who do and do not test, the investigators will conduct in-depth interviews to assess perceptions, attitudes and preferences related to incentives that may affect how incentives influence testing.

AIM 2: Adult men and women living in the study communities (N=400) who obtained an HIV-positive result at a community health campaign will be randomized into one of two incentive approaches that encourage HIV treatment adherence. The investigators hypothesize that a financial incentive will be more effective than no incentive in promoting HIV virologic suppression (a measure of success in ART adherence and navigation of the HIV treatment cascade) as incentives capitalize on present bias by drawing attention to a salient, immediate benefit of initiating and/or maintaining treatment, and leverage loss aversion by generating implicit loss as a result of delaying the decision to initiate ART.

AIM 3 - Pilot: In order to assess the feasibility of leveraging loss aversion to increase repeat HIV testing, HIV-negative adults who are at high risk of HIV acquisition and have just tested for HIV will be randomized into one of several different incentive strategies that encourage repeat HIV testing. The incentive arms will either: a) leverage loss-aversion by requesting participants to make an initial voluntary deposit that they will lose if they do not test for HIV at a later date; or b) use a standard gain-framed incentive strategy, in which participants are told they will receive an incentive for testing again for HIV at a later date. We will compare these two types of incentive strategies to a no incentive arm as well. Results from this pilot study will also be used to inform how best to implement loss aversion-based incentives in a larger trial, and provide preliminary data to guide sample size estimates for a larger trial comparing loss aversion vs. gain-framed incentive-based strategies vs. no incentive, on the outcome of repeat HIV testing. We hypothesize that loss aversion incentives will be feasible (i.e. ≥50% of eligible adults will be willing to participate), and will result in significantly higher testing uptake than either gain-framed incentives or no incentives.

Aim 3 - Trial. Assess the comparative effectiveness of deposit contracts (a form of incentives that leverages loss aversion) vs. gain-framed incentives, compared to no incentives (control), to promote repeat HIV testing among high-risk HIV-uninfected adults. In our Aim 3 pilot trial, we assessed the feasibility and acceptability of deposit contracts: a loss aversion-based strategy to incentivize retesting for HIV. As deposit contracts were found to be highly acceptable and feasible in our Aim 3 pilot in August-December 2017 (>90% of participants in the deposit contract group made deposits into the study contracts), we will now proceed with a larger trial of sufficient sample size to compare the effectiveness of loss aversion and gain-framed incentive approaches vs. no incentives, on the outcome of repeat HIV testing. We hypothesize that deposit contracts (loss aversion-based incentives) will result in significantly higher HIV retesting uptake 3- and 6-months after enrollment than either gain-framed incentives or no incentives.

AIM 1 - TESTING TRIAL

Inclusion criteria

• Male
• ≥18 years
• Resident (≥6 months) in one of 4 study communities

Exclusion criteria

• Plan to move <6 months from study start

AIM 2 - TREATMENT TRIAL

Inclusion criteria

• ≥18 years
• Resident (≥6 months) in one of 4 study communities
• HIV positive

Exclusion criteria

• Plan to move <6 months from study start

AIM 3 - REPEAT TESTING PILOT

Inclusion criteria

• HIV-negative by rapid HIV antibody testing at pilot trial baseline,
• Ages 18 - 59 years old,
• Attendee of high-risk site of HIV acquisition (e.g. bars, trading centers, etc.) in the region

Exclusion criteria

• Intention to move away from the community in the 3 months from time of recruitment

AIM 3 - REPEAT TESTING TRIAL

Inclusion criteria

• HIV-negative by rapid HIV antibody testing at time of recruitment,
• Ages 18 - 59 years old,
• Reported willingness to retest for HIV in the six months following recruitment,
• Sexual risk behavior, defined as at least one of the following self-reported risks in the 12 months prior to recruitment:

• >1 sexual partner, or
• known HIV-infected sexual partner, or
• sexually transmitted infection, or
• paid or received compensation or gifts for sex.

Exclusion criteria

• Intention to move away from the community for >=4 consecutive months during the six months following recruitment
• A history of testing for HIV >=3 times in the 12 months prior to recruitment