inducement

plural inducements

1. countableuncountableAn incentive that helps bring about a desired state.

   These policies were intended to change the situational inducements to crime by giving youths work.

   2001, Bernard E. Harcourt, Illusion of Order

   2 more examples

   Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale himself. Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my curiosity. Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled his island bulk; the undeliverable, nameless perils of the whale; these, with all the attending marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds, helped to sway me to my wish. With other men, perhaps, such things would not have been inducements; but as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.

   1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “chapter 1”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC

   Flagellation, especially among Orientals, is considered as much a sexual inducement as any other form of aphrodisiac.

   1961, Harry E. Wedeck, Dictionary of Aphrodisiacs, New York: The Citadel Press, page 97

   1. countableuncountableIn some contexts, this can imply bribery.

      Citation of Richard Stallman ...it won't run on a free platform and (...) your program is actually an inducement for people to install non-free software.

2. countableuncountablelawAn introductory statement of facts or background information.
3. countableuncountableeconomicsThe act of placing a port on a vessel's itinerary because the volume of cargo offered at that port justifies the cost of routing the vessel.