Putting Public Policy Defaults to the Test: The Case of Organ Donor Registration

Abstract

service reform, democratic renewal and governance in a comparative context and he has published extensively on these subjects and more broadly on theory and methods within political science. AbstractThere is growing interest within public management in using governance tools to influence citizens' behaviour, including changing 'choice architecture' by manipulating defaults. This paper reports a survey experiment with 4005 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 Downloaded by [Umeå University Library] at 10:18 06 April 20152 that changing to a neutral default for organ donation would be socially acceptable and could potentially generate more donors.

Behavioral Public Administration ad fontes: A Synthesis of Research on Bounded Rationality, Cognitive Biases, and Nudging in Public Organizations

“…Our analysis also unveiled studies that not only deal with cognitive biases in behaviors and judgments but also incorporate key tenets of nudging theory. These studies cover a variety of public decision domains, including improving attitudes toward government trustworthiness (Grimmelikhuijsen and Meijer 2012), increasing the collection of delinquent fines (Haynes et al 2013), boosting organ donations (Moseley and Stoker 2015), reducing the likelihood that home buyers become delinquent or default on their mortgages (Moulton et al 2015), and encouraging the adoption of desired health behaviors (Vlaev et al 2016).…”

Blood and organ donation: health impact, prevalence, correlates, and interventions

“…It has been shown that, on average, changing the default to an opt-out system leads to an increase in donation rates (Bilgel, 2012;Johnson & Goldstein, 2003;Rithalia, Myers & Snowden, 2009;Ugur, 2015) and this change is supported by public opinion (Moseley & Stoker, 2015;Rockloff & Hanley, 2014;van Dalen & Henkens, 2014). However, while, on average, opt-out is associated with higher deceased donations, compared to opt-in, it is also associated with lower living donations (Shepherd, O'Carroll & Ferguson, 2014).…”

Conducting Experiments in Public Management Research: A Practical Guide

“…Samples can be gathered in a number of ways, either in person by researchers in field settings (James and Moseley 2014), using Internet panels (Moseley and Stoker 2015), or using other online recruitment tools such as MTurk, where participants are paid a nominal amount to complete a survey (Marvel 2015). They can also be administered directly to citizens by post or phone, using postal lists or telephone directories to identify participants (e.g., James 2011).…”