经济学家教你如何坚持去健身房_BEC初级作文

经济学家教你如何坚持去健身房

If you’re like a lot of Americans, one of your New Year’s resolutions is to work out more. If you’re like a lot of Americans, you’ll join a gym this January as part of that plan. And if you’re like a lot of Americans, you won’t go very much.

你是不是和很多美国人一样，新年规划之一是要多锻炼，并在今年1月为此办了一张健身卡，但实际上却不会常去？

Our overoptimism about how much we will work out has been the subject of academic research. Nearly a decade ago, the economists Stefano DellaVigna and Ulrike Malmendier published “Paying Not to Go to the Gym,” a paper in which they found that members at three Boston gyms went an average of 4.3 times a month. With monthly membership fees of just over $70, that meant an average of $17 per visit — well above the $10 charge to work out as a nonmember.

关于我们对自己会进行多少锻炼过分乐观的问题，一直是学术研究的对象。近10年前，经济学者斯特凡诺·德拉维尼亚(Stefano DellaVigna)和乌尔丽克·马尔门迪尔(Ulrike Malmendier)发表了一篇名为《付了钱却不去健身》(Paying Not to Go to the Gym)的文章。他们在研究中发现，波士顿三家健身房的会员平均每月去4.3次。在月会员费略高于70美元（约合440元人民币）的情况下，这意味着每去一次平均花费17美元，远高于非会员锻炼一次10美元的收费。

So why didn’t they just pay per visit? Because they overestimated how often they would go. The authors surveyed gym members who, on average, said they would work out about 9.5 times a month, more than twice the actual attendance observed in the study. People remained in denial about their gym attendance even after they’d stopped going entirely: On average, nonattending gym members did not cancel until 2.3 months after their last visit, paying for $187 worth of completely unused gym access.