Providing free electronic cigarettes or other stop-smoking products to employees to get them to give up real cigarettes is less effective than the threat of taking away a cash reward for quitting, according to a new study that weighs the effectiveness of a variety of workplace incentive¹ programs.

一项衡量了各种工作场所激励计划的有效性的新研究称，与其为员工提供免费电子香烟或其他戒烟产品让他们戒烟，还不如采用现金奖励的方法更有效。

The findings, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, call into question the claims by e-cigarette enthusiasts² that the devices may be better than traditional quit aids at helping³ smokers⁴ to stop.

这项发表在《新英格兰医学杂志》上的研究结果，质疑了电子烟爱好者关于电子烟可能比传统戒烟方法更能帮助吸烟者戒烟的观点。

"Do they help people stop smoking? The answer to that is clearly no," lead author Dr. Scott Halpern, of the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia, said in a telephone interview.

费城宾夕法尼亚大学佩雷尔曼医学院的斯科特·哈尔伯恩博士在接受电话采访时表示：“它们能帮助人们戒烟吗？答案显然是否定的。”

"We cannot detect any evidence that they are better than offering free conventional smoking cessation aids or just providing information."

“我们没有任何证据表明电子烟比提供免费的传统戒烟指南或相关信息更好。”

The study is also significant because it may be the first to look at programs to get all smoking employees to quit.

这项研究很重要，因为它可能是第一个考虑让所有吸烟员工戒烟的项目。

The results show that if the motivation isn't there, neither are the positive results.

结果表明，如果动机不存在，积极的结果也不存在。

Among 6,006 employees at 54 U.S.-based companies, the six-month smoking abstinence rates for all the strategies were less than 3 percent.

这项研究的对象是来自54家美国公司的6006名员工，这些公司尝试过多种途径让员工戒烟，但六个月的戒烟率还是低于3%。

Some of these "engaged" participants were assigned to a group that only received information regarding the benefits of quitting and got access to a service that offered text messages designed to encourage them; in this group, less than 1 percent stayed off cigarettes for six months.

参与项目的一部分员工被分配到一个小组，他们只是被告知戒烟的好处，项目组也不断地给他们发一些鼓励的短信，最后这组人中只有不到1%的人在六个月内戒了烟。

The "engaged" workers who also received free smoking cessation aids such as nicotine⁵ patches, lozenges and gum, or one of the two FDA-approved stop-smoking drugs, had a quit rate of only 2.9 percent.

另外一部分参与该项目的员工，他们也获得了免费的戒烟辅助品，如尼古丁贴片、含片和口香糖，或者在两种FDA批准的戒烟药物中选择一种，但最终他们的戒烟率只有2.9%。

Free e-cigarettes, where the participant could pick their flavors, brought the rate up to 4.8 percent, but the difference compared to free patches and the like was not statistically⁶ meaningful.

第三组人员可以享受免费的电子烟，参与者可以挑选口味，戒烟比例上升至4.8%，但是由于电子烟是免费供应，因此这种试验结果没有统计学意义。

In the fourth group, whose participants got the free smoking cessation products plus a cash reward for staying away from tobacco -- $100 for the first month, an additional $200 at the three-month mark and $300 if they stayed smoke-free for six months -- 9.5 percent quit.

在第四组中的参与者则获得了免费戒烟产品，并给予他们戒烟的现金奖励--一个月不抽烟奖励100美元，3个月不抽额外增加200美元，如果他们连续6个月不抽烟，就再给他们300美元，这时戒烟率达到9.5%。

That was significantly better performance than workers getting the free cessation aids alone but not a statistically meaningful difference from the e-cigarette group.

这比单纯的免费戒烟者的表现要好得多，但与抽电子烟那组相比，这种显著差异也没有什么统计学意义。

The employees who did the best got whatever cessation products they wanted plus $600 in an account with the threat that they would lose the money if they didn't stay smoke-free for six months.

戒烟最好的一组员工是采取了下面这种措施：首先给他们提供任何他们想要的戒烟产品，然后再在他们的账户上预存600美元，如果他们在6个月以内抽烟了，这笔钱就会被要回。

Their success rate was 12.7 percent, which was clearly better than those who got e-cigarettes or free cessation aids alone.

他们的成功率为12.7%，这明显比那些只有电子烟或免费戒烟的人好。

It reflects an odd psychological quirk⁷ about human behavior: "People are much more motivated to avoid losing $100 than they are to gain $100, even though, economically, they are flip⁸ sides of the same coin," Halpern noted⁹.

这反映了一种奇怪的关于人类行为的心理怪僻。哈尔伯恩博士称：“相比起获得100美元，人们为了避免损失100美元更有动力，尽管经济从角度来看这只是一枚硬币的两面。”