Evaluating the social acceptability of the Re‐Connect concept: A smartphone‐based, nonfinancial, contingency management intervention
Most adults will trade short app blocks for health behavior—give them control and they buy in.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Raiff et al. (2025) asked adults how they feel about Re-Connect. The app locks your favorite phone games until you finish a health task.
They used an online survey. People read a short story about the lock-unlock idea and then rated if they would use or tell friends to try it.
What they found
About two out of every three adults said the idea sounds okay. They would use it or suggest it to others.
Acceptability jumped higher when people saw they could still choose when the app locks. Control matters.
How this fits with other research
Roll (2005) paid teens with dollar vouchers to stay off cigarettes. Re-Connect swaps money for app access, showing the same contingency-management spirit without cash.
Craig et al. (2024) proved that nondrug rewards can keep adults away from alcohol. Re-Connect extends that idea to everyday health goals like step counts.
Song et al. (2023) showed autistic adults happily complete daily phone surveys. Their high completion rate mirrors the broad phone comfort seen in Re-Connect.
Why it matters
You now have a cheap, built-in reinforcer sitting in every client’s pocket. No vouchers, no extra staff. Ask your client to list their top three apps, then set a clear health target. Let the client pick lock times so they keep control. Start small—five locked minutes after a 10-minute walk—and watch engagement grow.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Contingency management is a well‐validated behavior change intervention; however, the financial incentives can prevent it from being widely adopted. Most Americans have a smartphone with applications (apps) that they find enjoyable and engage with for a considerable amount of time. A potential avenue for contingency management dissemination is a mobile smartphone application that leverages the existing reward value of smartphone apps as a tool for behavior change. The present study examined the acceptability of the Re‐Connect concept, which proposes to block nonessential but highly preferred apps and unlock them contingent on meeting the user's health goals. Out of the sample surveyed (N = 146), 63.02% reported that they would be likely to use Re‐Connect and 67.81% would recommend it to someone. Acceptability of Re‐Connect increased with greater user control. These results suggest that access to preferred smartphone apps could be a socially acceptable incentive in a contingency management intervention.
Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 2025 · doi:10.1002/jaba.2923