Mental Models a field guide

Tool/Behavioral Economics/No. 0167

Commitment Device

A commitment device is a voluntary arrangement that changes future options or incentives to help people follow through despite temptation. Economists Robert Strotz and Thomas Schelling studied this form of precommitment, which limits choices or makes unwanted actions more costly.

Also called Commitment Device (Precommitment) · Precommitment · Self-Commitment

a tool: pick it up
Evidence
Useful, modest evidence
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6 min
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14 connections
Useful when
Habits and self-control · Learning and memory · Money and investing · Running projects

01You've seen this when…

  1. in life

    Before browsing online stores, you activate a shopping-site blocker until payday. Tonight, disabling it won’t be an option.

  2. at work

    You arrange a Wednesday review of your unfinished report. Nobody requires it, but knowing your colleague will be waiting makes another week of postponement harder.

  3. out in the world

    In a college course, students choose early essay deadlines with late penalties instead of keeping the option to submit everything at term’s end.

02The idea

On Sunday, putting money aside seems easy. On Friday, a purchase suddenly feels urgent while a sale and dinner with friends compete for your money. Friday’s choice feels different, even if Sunday’s plan was clear.

A commitment device is an arrangement you voluntarily choose before that change arrives. Some arrangements remove an option, while others make an unwanted choice more costly or make the intended choice harder to abandon. You arrange the situation so that following through depends less on how determined you feel later.

Some devices are hard constraints: money you cannot withdraw until a chosen date, or a blocker you cannot immediately disable. Others are softer: a review appointment or a promise to someone whose disappointment matters to you. The useful test is whether the arrangement actually changes your later options or incentives.

An implementation intention specifies when and how you’ll act. A commitment device goes further by changing the consequences of skipping that action. The psychological pull of commitment and consistency may help. A declared goal alone doesn’t reliably bind you; a commitment device changes your later options or incentives.

The same logic appears in strategic commitment, where limiting your options changes another person’s behavior. Here, the main person you’re trying to influence is your future self.

03How to use it

  1. Locate the point where you change your mind. Identify when and where the specific temptation arises. A device for late-night shopping should act at checkout. A budget reminder over breakfast leaves that later choice open.
  2. Choose an observable action. Commit to submitting a draft, transferring a chosen amount, or attending three sessions. Avoid outcomes you cannot fully control, such as getting promoted or losing a precise amount of weight.
  3. Change one future option or consequence. Use a blocker to limit access during a vulnerable window, or make skipping your plan more costly with a scheduled review or a modest refundable deposit. Make the consequence clear before you opt in.
  4. Close the easy escape route. If you can cancel the restriction the instant temptation arrives, it may be little more than a reminder. A waiting period or an independent person can allow an exception while delaying release.
  5. Preserve a route for emergencies. Define exceptions for illness, essential expenses, or changed circumstances. Make release slower or subject to an independent check, keeping exceptions possible.
  6. Start with the smallest effective restriction. Try a short period and a tolerable stake. Record whether it improves follow-through and what it costs in money, flexibility, and stress.

Aim for enough structure to carry a considered intention through a predictable weak moment, with discomfort limited to what that requires.

04A worked example

Researchers Nava Ashraf and Dean Karlan worked with fellow researcher Wesley Yin and a bank in the Philippines to offer a savings account called SEED. Customers could choose a date or a savings target. Until the chosen condition was met, withdrawals were restricted.

The offer was randomly assigned among existing bank clients. About 28% of those offered the account opened one. After a year, average savings balances at the bank were higher in the group offered the product than in the control group.

What it looks like An inconvenient savings account. An ordinary account lets you retrieve your own money whenever you want; this one deliberately limits that freedom.

What’s actually going on Customers can choose the restriction while they want to save, making later spending harder. The randomized offer provides evidence that access to the product increased average bank savings. That result alone leaves open whether every customer benefited and whether the increase in bank balances represented an equal increase in total household wealth.

What made it work The account enforced the withdrawal restriction. Customers selected a condition that suited their goal and joined voluntarily. The lesson applies to some savers: they will choose less flexibility because the freedom to withdraw keeps defeating their plan.

05When to reach for it

06When it misleads

  • It binds you to a goal you no longer endorse. Changing your mind in response to new information updates your judgment. When you yield to temptation, you put an immediate urge ahead of that judgment. Keep commitments short enough to revisit before renewing them.
  • It treats a practical barrier as a motivation problem. A missed deadline may reflect illness, workload, or missing skills. A higher penalty leaves shortages of time or skills unchanged.
  • The stake is dangerously large. Rent money, public humiliation, and threats to relationships are poor experiments. A device that creates panic may be worse than the original habit.
  • The escape route defeats the restriction. The benefit of locking one savings account is limited if you spend through another account or borrow at high interest. Check the whole set of options, including those you left unrestricted.
  • It turns past spending into a reason to persist. A fee you’ve already lost is a sunk cost: its cost is fixed whether you follow through or skip. A deposit you can still recover gives you a financial stake in the next choice. An irrecoverable payment has the same cost either way.
  • It relies on someone who cannot enforce it. An accountability partner may quietly waive every consequence or resent being made your supervisor. Agree on their role beforehand.

Different people need different amounts of structure. Behavioral friction, reminders, or an easier environment may solve the problem without binding your future choices.

07Roots

Robert Strotz approached the problem through an economist’s spending plan. His 1955 paper considered how someone could choose a schedule for future consumption, then prefer to abandon it as time passed. A plan written today could lose its authority tomorrow without any new information arriving. One response was to restrict future choices in advance.

Thomas Schelling explored a related puzzle in bargaining. In The Strategy of Conflict in 1960, he showed how giving up an option could make a threat or promise credible. Someone unable to retreat could bargain differently from someone merely claiming they wouldn’t. Later, he brought that logic from the negotiating table into everyday self-control, where the adversary was sometimes the same person, later, wanting another cigarette.

Schelling’s 1984 work on self-command helped frame these internal conflicts through incentives and arrangements, broadening the explanation beyond character alone. Behavioral economists subsequently tested that approach through products such as restricted savings accounts. An old idea became a practical design question: which freedoms would people willingly surrender today to make tomorrow’s behavior match their intentions?

08How solid is this?

ContestedMixedUsefulEstablished

Randomized trials show that some commitment arrangements improve saving and other behaviors. Uptake and benefits vary, and successful trials do not establish that every penalty, accountability scheme, or lockout works.

09Connections

confused withcounterscounterscounterscounterscounterscounterscountersleads topart ofCommitmentDeviceImplementationIntentionsNot written yetHyperbolicDiscountingPresent BiasSunk CostFallacyNot written yetTimeConsistencyEgo DepletionEscalationof CommitmentParkinson’s LawNot written yetCommitment andConsistencyNot written yetChoiceArchitecture

+ 4 more in the list

10Origin and sources

A longstanding self-binding idea analyzed by Robert Strotz in 1955. Thomas Schelling developed strategic commitment in 1960 and applied related reasoning to self-command in 1984.

  1. [1]Strotz, R. H. (1955). Myopia and Inconsistency in Dynamic Utility Maximization. The Review of Economic Studies, 23(3), 165–180.
  2. [2]Schelling, T. C. (1960). The Strategy of Conflict. Harvard University Press.
  3. [3]Schelling, T. C. (1984). Self-Command in Practice, in Policy, and in a Theory of Rational Choice. The American Economic Review, 74(2), 1–11.
  4. [4]Ashraf, N., Karlan, D., & Yin, W. (2006). Tying Odysseus to the Mast: Evidence From a Commitment Savings Product in the Philippines. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 121(2), 635–672.
  5. [5]Bryan, G., Karlan, D., & Nelson, S. (2010). Commitment Devices. Annual Review of Economics, 2, 671–698.

Suggest an edit· Updated 2026-10-02