TY - JOUR
T1 - Putting Public Policy Defaults to the Test: The Case of Organ Donor Registration
AU - Moseley, Alice
AU - STOKER, Gerry
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
PY - 2015/4/3
Y1 - 2015/4/3
N2 - ABSTRACT: There is growing interest within public management in using governance tools to influence citizens’ behavior, including changing “choice architecture” by manipulating defaults. This article reports a survey experiment with 4,005 British adults which examined the impact of different defaults on people's propensity to visit, and register on, the organ donor register. There were significant effects of the different defaults on visits to the registration page but not on actual registrations. A default where people were automatically assumed to be donors but could opt out, and a neutral default where people had to answer either “yes” or “no,” both yielded significantly more organ donor register visits than a default where people were not assumed to be donors but could opt in. Attitudinal data collected suggested a preference for a neutral default. The results indicate that changing to a neutral default for organ donation would be socially acceptable and could potentially generate more donors.
AB - ABSTRACT: There is growing interest within public management in using governance tools to influence citizens’ behavior, including changing “choice architecture” by manipulating defaults. This article reports a survey experiment with 4,005 British adults which examined the impact of different defaults on people's propensity to visit, and register on, the organ donor register. There were significant effects of the different defaults on visits to the registration page but not on actual registrations. A default where people were automatically assumed to be donors but could opt out, and a neutral default where people had to answer either “yes” or “no,” both yielded significantly more organ donor register visits than a default where people were not assumed to be donors but could opt in. Attitudinal data collected suggested a preference for a neutral default. The results indicate that changing to a neutral default for organ donation would be socially acceptable and could potentially generate more donors.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84931411051&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/10967494.2015.1012574
DO - 10.1080/10967494.2015.1012574
M3 - Article
SN - 1096-7494
VL - 18
SP - 246
EP - 264
JO - International Public Management Journal
JF - International Public Management Journal
IS - 2
ER -