A new study found that smokers would be more willing to kick the habit if they were offered financial incentives, ThinkProgress reported.

Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania found that four different financial programs, each worth roughly $800 over six months, were more successful at getting smokers to quit than programs providing free access to behavioral counseling and nicotine replacement therapy.

For the study, researchers enrolled more than 2,500 people from across the United States during an eight-month period in 2012. The study volunteers were assigned to one of five groups. Two of the incentive programs "targeted individuals, and two targeted groups of six participants. Of the individual and group programs, one of each involved rewards of approximately $800 for smoking cessation; the other entailed refundable deposits of $150 plus $650 in reward payments, if participants were successful," Medscape reported. Those in the control group were offered informational resources and free smoking cessation aids.

"We found that the reward-based programs were more effective than deposits overall because more people accepted them in the first place," Scott D. Halpern, lead author of the study, said in a statement. "However, among people who would have accepted any program we offered them, the deposit contracts were twice as effective as rewards, and five times more effective than free information and nicotine replacement therapy, likely because they leveraged people's natural aversion to losing money. With such unprecedented rates of success, the trick now is to figure out how to get more people to sign up -- to feel like they have skin in the game."

Based on the study results, CVS Health, which partnered on the trail, plans to try out this approach.

"As we continue to see smoking as the number one cause of preventable death in the United States, it's important for employers to consider different options to use benefit design to help their workers quit," said Kevin Volpp, senior author of the study. "When compared to the estimated $4,000 to 6,000 incremental annual cost associated with employing a smoker over a non-smoker, a $700 to $800 incentive paid only to those who quit seems well worth the cost."

The findings are detailed in the New England Journal of Medicine.