When I was working on my startup in 2022, I spent a lot of time thinking about the incentive alignment problem. It is the issue of aligning your business’ financial incentives with the goals of your users. It answers the question: “Does the business make money when the users achieve their goals?”
Nowadays, subscription-based services are increasingly popular. The business gets a reliable cash-flow and can focus on providing a high-quality service over-time to the current users, instead of fixating on acquiring new customers. This works well for platforms like Netflix. Your goal is getting entertained, and you will continue paying as long as Netflix provides you with quality media.
But other times it doesn’t work that well. Imagine you had a medical issue that could be treated effectively by paying a one-time fee. Alternatively, you could pay a monthly subscription for a temporary relief that never addresses the underlying issue. While the former is what you would likely want, the latter is more financially sustainable for the business. In such cases, the financial incentives are not aligned with your goals.
Many apps have misaligned incentives. Hinge, for example, is a dating app whose slogan is “designed to be deleted,” yet the longer you remain a subscriber, the more money the company makes.
The incentive structure of some subscription-based digital wellbeing apps creates similar issues. Instead of encouraging developers to help you tackle your problems once and for all, it is better for them to make you reliant on their solution. In fact, many app-blockers are just pain-reliefs. Sure, you might use social media apps less because of them, but at the end of the day, you are still the same person. And once you uninstall those blockers, you will revert to your old behaviors. (source)
Don’t get me wrong, I am not against all the digital solutions out there. When paired with psychological approaches, app-blockers and other real-time interventions can be highly effective. But keep in mind that as they have to deal with the incentive alignment issue, many of them aren’t designed to help you change your behavior at the core.
However, there are good news. With some creativity, incentives can be realigned. In ancient China, doctors were paid monthly when patients were healthy. If one person got sick, their doctor would not be paid for them. The goal was to get the patients healthy and keep them that way. Maybe incentives can be re-aligned for digital wellbeing apps as well.