Singapore is turning to small financial incentives to get people back into books. Through Read SG, a government initiative developed with the national library system, participants can collect virtual coins for reading at least 15 minutes a day, eventually exchanging them for a cash reward.
The system is straightforward: participants log their daily reading session and receive 20 virtual coins. Once they have accumulated 1,000 coins, they can claim one Singapore dollar. With only one session counting each day, that means 50 days of reading to earn a single dollar. These are hardly large sums.
The point is gamification rather than a substantial financial return. When an activity becomes a game—something with points to accumulate and a reward to win—people are often much more willing to take part. Marketers know this well. Here, that mechanism is being put to a more worthwhile use: encouraging people to rediscover books instead of endlessly scrolling through their phones.
The encouraging part is the government’s effort to help citizens build healthier habits. Its intention is to reduce dependence on phones across age groups, including the aimless scrolling often described as doomscrolling. Alongside the reading programme, Singapore is also considering restrictions on social media use among younger people, similar to those gradually being introduced in Europe.
Financial incentives for better habits are not new to Singapore. In the past, it introduced a two-year programme offering grocery vouchers to people who agreed to walk rather than travel by car. The reading initiative follows the same approach: a modest, tangible reward to encourage a change in everyday behaviour.
With reading skills declining across OECD countries, including Italy, a similar experiment might be worth trying in Italy too.