Personal opinion (not backed up by facts): yes. The systems do better when running longer.

Depending on your indoor and outdoor design temperatures, the unit could be oversized.

It might also be an indication that your home is leaky, causing (or contributing to) the frequent cycling.

V

Starting up is one of the big wear causes on any electric motor, but especially for larger induction motors.

They pull a much larger amount of current (1.5x to 2x is not uncommon) until they get up to normal operating speed.

In FL, he is likely oversized for heating but that is just the way it is.

You are killing your efficiency and shortening the life expectancy.

Ideally we would like heating and cooling equipment to run 100% of the time and be perfectly matched to the load all the time.

It would be painfully complicated and expensive to achieve this.

Instead we use thermostats most often in a 'bang-bang' configuration (on or off are the only options) though a few higher end systems can alter the system output (AKA 'staging') to try and match the load).

The 'dea zone' in the control (the thermostat) is designed to eliminate short cycling while providing an acceptable comfort level.
Short cycling of compressor systems can be a real problem.
The compressor may try to start with a lot of refrigerant almost fully compressed and take LOT of current as it tries to finish the compression stroke.
Given longer intervals between starts the partially compressed refrigerant leaks out of the cylinder (or scroll) so the motor starting load is not nearly as high.

Even with no load, induction motors pull a lot of current at start-up.
With a load things get even worse.

Motor life is sometime rated in 'starts' and the starting capacitors used ARE rated in 'starts.'

This is the expected number of starting cycles the device is expected to provide before failing.

More starts shortens the lifetime.

Thanks for the input. It was a nice experiment. However, I have decided to go back to the original default of a 2 degree swing, instead of risking excess wear and tear.

Brickeyee, Your description of the perfect equipment reminded me of the fairly new furnace that we had up in Michigan. It was a high efficiently Bryant with a variable, (or multi speed) motor. It ran a great deal of the time, but frequently at such a slow speed, that it could barley be heard. The comfort level was excellent. I don't know if they make, (or can make), heat pumps that work that well. The pump that came with this house, while fairly new too, runs only at full blast, and not very "warm" heat. I think that is pretty typical of heat pumps. So far, I don't have any complaints about the cooling in summer.

Indoor comfort is why one has HVAC, that is the bottom line. If you're more comfortable at a 1 degree Deadband setting then so be it. Set for 1 degree. anything else would be uncomfortable. I find a 2 degree or more causes the unit to run a lot longer because it now has to lower the temperature two degrees running a lot longer. If it causes my A/C to wear out sooner so be it. At the least I was not suffering.

People here are confusing "deadband" with "anticipation". They are not the same. The discussion here is around "anticipation" not "deadband".