Increasing Organ Donor Registrations with Behavioral Interventions: A Field Experiment

Abstract

Although prior research has advanced our understanding of the drivers of organ donation attitudes and intentions, little is known about how to increase actual registrations within explicit consent systems. Some empirical evidence suggests that costly, labor intensive educational programs and mass media campaigns might increase registrations. However, they are neither scalable nor economical solutions. To address these limitations, the authors conducted a field experiment (N = 3,330) in Ontario, Canada testing the effectiveness of behaviorally informed promotion interventions as well as process improvements. They find intercepting customers with materials targeting information and altruistic motives at the right time, along with streamlining customer service, significantly increased registrations. Specifically, the best performing intervention, prompting perspective-taking through reciprocal altruism (“ If you needed a transplant would you have one?”), significantly increased new registration rates from 4.1% in the control condition to 7.4%. The authors followed up with seven posttests (Total N = 3,376) to find support for their theoretical predictions and to explore the mechanisms through which the interventions may have operated. This paper provides evidence for low-cost, scalable marketing solutions that increase organ donor registrations in a prompted choice context and has important implications for public policy and enhancing societal welfare.

Why Is It Wrong to Sell Your Body? Understanding Liberals’ Versus Conservatives’ Moral Objections to Bodily Markets

“…The second defining feature of bodily markets is that the exchange of a bodily product must take place in return for some commercial payment. Thus, these markets are distinct from those involving altruistic donations (e.g., Pessemier, Bemmaor, and Hanssens 1977;Robitaille et al 2021). This is because placing a monetary value on the human body and trading it for economic benefit gives rise to unique economic, ethical, legal, and psychological challenges, which are distinct from the challenges in prosocial markets (Satz 2012).…”

50 years of social marketing: seeding solutions for the future

“…Historically commercial marketing activity was, and in many cases still remains, heavily fixated on profit maximisation. However, many current and emerging marketing academics are asking for change as they show a sincere desire to apply marketing as a force of good (Chandy et al , 2021; Gonzalez-Arcos et al , 2021; Robitaille et al , 2021; Weihrauch and Huang, 2021). Social marketing was conceived as an approach that places social and environmental issues at the core, and social marketers generally retain a tight focus on increasing social wellbeing and environmental protection.…”

Behavioral nudges increase COVID-19 vaccinations: Two randomized controlled trials

“…First, the reminder made vaccine availability top of mind, in order to overcome forgetfulness and prompt people to adopt the target behavior (15). Second, it sought to minimize potential sources of friction (e.g., inconvenience) by including a link to the appointment scheduling website, allowing patients to easily act right away (7). The earliest first reminder date was February 1, 2021.…”

“…As every American is promised to have access to the vaccine by May 1, 2021, developing evidence-based communication strategies to maximize vaccine uptake at scale is a pressing task (4). Nudges (i.e., interventions that incorporate behavioral science insights), which have been successfully deployed for behavior change across numerous policy-relevant domains (5)(6)(7)(8)(9), can contribute to this effort (4,10).…”