Revealing the biggest New Year’s resolutions in 2024

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New Year is coming and across America consumers will soon be vowing to change their habits in a range of areas, including shopping, eating and drinking – at least for a while. Their decisions will shape the climate in multiple sectors, providing opportunities for marketers, as well as threats to those selling the goods and services consumers will solemnly promise to give up.

As we approach 2024, we’ve used YouGov Self-serve – our fast-turnaround, fully self-serve survey platform – to take a deep dive into consumers’ attitudes around resolutions and answer the following questions:

• Who’s planning to make resolutions and which sectors are most likely to be affected this coming year?
• How long do consumers typically expect to keep up with resolutions?
• Which resolutions are the hardest to keep and therefore the most likely to fall by the wayside?
• What method have people tried to help them keep to their resolutions?

Women, parents and young people are more likely to make 2024 resolutions

The long-time tradition of making resolutions is still popular with many. A new YouGov Self-serve survey, which polled 1,000 US adults, finds that almost two in five (39%) US adults plan to make at least one New Year’s resolution for 2024.

A few groups stand out for their likelihood to set a 2024 resolution, including women (46% vs. 33 of men), parents who have children under the age of 18 (54% vs. 27% of those with a child age 18 or older) and young adults ages 18 to 34 (54% vs. 21% of those 65 and up).

Health, finance and productivity-related resolutions are top priorities in 2024

A few key themes stand out when looking across the types of resolutions people are making next year. Health-related goals are some of the most common resolutions, with many striving to eat healthier (56%), lose weight (50%) and improve their fitness (41%), representing as usual a significant opportunity to marketers in these sectors. Nearly two in five (37%) say they plan to focus more on their mental health next year. We conducted a similar (but not identical) poll last year, which indicated that just 24% planned a mental health resolution.

Also popular among resolution-makers are vows related to finance such as saving more money, tracking spending, or paying off debt. More than two in five people who plan to make a resolution in 2024 say they’ll focus more on their finances.

Other popular goals with resolution-makers next year include being more productive or organized (37%), becoming closer with friends and family (31%), traveling more (22%), focusing more on their careers (21%) and picking up a new hobby (19%).

Less popular resolutions amongst this group include being more conscious of their impact on the environment (16%), focusing on their education (11%) and starting a romantic relationship (9%).

How long do people follow through on resolutions? 2-3 months is common

The old cliche is that New Year’s resolutions are easy to make and tough to keep. This sentiment certainly aligns with YouGov’s survey findings as only 13% of US adults say they can keep up with their resolutions all year.

Even out of the gate can be challenging for some. 13% of people say their resolutions typically only last a month or less. The most common response at 21% is 2-3 months. An additional 13% say they their resolutions last 4-6 months and 3% say it lasts 7-11 months.

People think resolutions about food, diet and fitness are the hardest to keep

Which came first, the resolution or the failure? New Year’s resolutions are notoriously difficult to follow through on, but some are deemed harder to keep with than others.

Health-related goals are some of those viewed as more difficult, with over a third saying they would have a hard time keeping food/diet-related (38%) and fitness-related resolutions (36%). See our ground-breaking study on semaglutide and Ozempic to understand how this class of medicines may change the face of dieting and fitness in 2024. This sentiment is shared across all age groups but women, in particular, say they would struggle with a food- or diet-related resolution (43% vs. 38% of all US adults).

FInance-related resolutions are deemed as the next toughest to keep by 24% of people, especially young adults ages 18 to 34 (35%).

Roughly one in five (18%) say resolutions relating to mental wellness would be difficult for them to keep, rising to 27% among young adults.