IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/20378.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Don't Take 'No' For An Answer: An Experiment With Actual Organ Donor Registrations

Author

Listed:
  • Judd B. Kessler
  • Alvin E. Roth

Abstract

Over 10,000 people in the U.S. die each year while waiting for an organ. Attempts to increase organ transplantation have focused on changing the registration question from an opt-in frame to an active choice frame. We analyze this change in California and show it decreased registration rates. Similarly, a "field in the lab" experiment run on actual organ donor registration decisions finds no increase in registrations resulting from an active choice frame. In addition, individuals are more likely to support donating the organs of a deceased who did not opt-in than one who said "no" in an active choice frame.

Suggested Citation

  • Judd B. Kessler & Alvin E. Roth, 2014. "Don't Take 'No' For An Answer: An Experiment With Actual Organ Donor Registrations," NBER Working Papers 20378, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:20378
    Note: EH
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w20378.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nicola Lacetera & Mario Macis & Robert Slonim, 2012. "Will There Be Blood? Incentives and Displacement Effects in Pro-social Behavior," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 4(1), pages 186-223, February.
    2. Lacetera, Nicola & Macis, Mario, 2010. "Social image concerns and prosocial behavior: Field evidence from a nonlinear incentive scheme," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 225-237, November.
    3. Kessler, Judd B. & Roth, Alvin E., 2014. "Loopholes undermine donation: An experiment motivated by an organ donation priority loophole in Israel," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 19-28.
    4. Carl Mellström & Magnus Johannesson, 2008. "Crowding Out in Blood Donation: Was Titmuss Right?," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 6(4), pages 845-863, June.
    5. Theodore C. Bergstrom & Rodney J. Garratt & Damien Sheehan-Connor, 2009. "One Chance in a Million: Altruism and the Bone Marrow Registry," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(4), pages 1309-1334, September.
    6. Bergstrom Ted C. & Garratt Rod & Sheehan-Connor Damien, 2012. "Stem Cell Donor Matching for Patients of Mixed Race," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 12(1), pages 1-27, July.
    7. Judd B. Kessler & Alvin E. Roth, 2012. "Organ Allocation Policy and the Decision to Donate," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(5), pages 2018-2047, August.
    8. Steven D. Levitt & John A. List, 2007. "What Do Laboratory Experiments Measuring Social Preferences Reveal About the Real World?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(2), pages 153-174, Spring.
    9. Lacetera, Nicola & Macis, Mario, 2010. "Do all material incentives for pro-social activities backfire? The response to cash and non-cash incentives for blood donations," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 738-748, August.
    10. Tayfun Sönmez & Alvin E. Roth & M. Utku Ünver, 2007. "Efficient Kidney Exchange: Coincidence of Wants in Markets with Compatibility-Based Preferences," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(3), pages 828-851, June.
    11. Richard H. Thaler & Cass R. Sunstein, 2023. "Libertarian paternalism," Chapters, in: Cass R. Sunstein & Lucia A. Reisch (ed.), Research Handbook on Nudges and Society, chapter 1, pages 10-16, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    12. Lacetera, Nicola & Macis, Mario & Stith, Sarah S., 2014. "Removing financial barriers to organ and bone marrow donation: The effect of leave and tax legislation in the U.S," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 43-56.
    13. Saidman, Susan L. & Roth, Alvin E. & Sonmez, Tayfun & Unver, M. Utku & Delmonico, Francis L., 2014. "Increasing the Opportunity of Live Kidney Donation by Matching for Two and Three Way Exchanges," MPRA Paper 58247, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Herr, Annika & Normann, Hans-Theo, 2019. "How much priority bonus should be given to registered organ donors? An experimental analysis," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 158(C), pages 367-378.
    2. James Andreoni & Marta Serra-Garcia, 2021. "The Pledging Puzzle: How Can Revocable Promises Increase Charitable Giving?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(10), pages 6198-6210, October.
    3. Herr, Annika & Normann, Hans-Theo, 2018. "How much Priority Bonus Should be Given to Registered Donors? An Experimental Analysis," DICE Discussion Papers 306, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).
    4. Buffat, Justin & Goette, Lorenz & Grassi, Simona, 2020. "Thinking about and deciding to be an organ donor: An experimental analysis," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 265(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Judd B. Kessler & Alvin E. Roth, 2012. "Organ Allocation Policy and the Decision to Donate," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(5), pages 2018-2047, August.
    2. Kessler, Judd B. & Roth, Alvin E., 2014. "Loopholes undermine donation: An experiment motivated by an organ donation priority loophole in Israel," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 19-28.
    3. Lacetera, Nicola & Macis, Mario & Stith, Sarah S., 2014. "Removing financial barriers to organ and bone marrow donation: The effect of leave and tax legislation in the U.S," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 43-56.
    4. Li, Mengling & Riyanto, Yohanes E. & Xu, Menghan, 2022. "Remedying adverse selection in donor-priority rule using freeze period: Theory and experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 194(C), pages 384-407.
    5. Kurt E. Schnier & Robert M. Merion & Nicole Turgeon & David Howard, 2018. "Subsidizing Altruism In Living Organ Donation," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 56(1), pages 398-423, January.
    6. Christine Exley, 2013. "Incentives for Prosocial Behavior: The Role of Reputations," Discussion Papers 12-022, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
    7. Joan Costa-Font & Mireia Jofre-Bonet & Steven T. Yen, 2013. "Not All Incentives Wash Out the Warm Glow: The Case of Blood Donation Revisited," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 66(4), pages 529-551, November.
    8. Nicola Lacetera & Mario Macis & Robert Slonim, 2014. "Rewarding Volunteers: A Field Experiment," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(5), pages 1107-1129, May.
    9. Goette, Lorenz & Stutzer, Alois, 2020. "Blood donations and incentives: Evidence from a field experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 170(C), pages 52-74.
    10. Slonim, Robert & Wang, Carmen, 2016. "Market Design for Altruistic Supply: Evidence from the Lab," IZA Discussion Papers 9650, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Niu, Xiaofei & Li, Jianbiao, 2020. "Incentivizing organ donation by swearing an oath: The role of signature and ritual," EconStor Preprints 203243, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, revised 2020.
    12. Guodong Gao & Tianshu Sun & Ginger Zhe Jin, 2015. "Mobile Messaging for Offline Social Interactions: A Large Field Expeiment," Natural Field Experiments 00571, The Field Experiments Website.
    13. Tianshu Sun & Guodong (Gordon) Gao & Ginger Zhe Jin, 2015. "Mobile Messaging for Offline Group Formation in Prosocial Activities: A Large Field Experiment," NBER Working Papers 21704, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Nicola Lacetera & Mario Macis & Robert Slonim, 2011. "Rewarding Altruism? A Natural Field Experiment," NBER Working Papers 17636, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Scott Duke Kominers & Alexander Teytelboym & Vincent P Crawford, 2017. "An invitation to market design," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 33(4), pages 541-571.
    16. Victor Iajya & Nicola Lacetera & Mario Macis & Robert Slonim, 2012. "The Effects of Information, Social and Economic Incentives on Voluntary Undirected Blood Donations: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial in Argentina," NBER Working Papers 18630, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Li, Mengling & Riyanto, Yohanes E. & Xu, Menghan, 2023. "Prioritized organ allocation rules under compatibility constraints," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 141(C), pages 403-427.
    18. Matthew Chao & Geoffrey Fisher, 2022. "Self-Interested Giving: The Relationship Between Conditional Gifts, Charitable Donations, and Donor Self-Interestedness," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(6), pages 4537-4567, June.
    19. Heger, Stephanie A. & Slonim, Robert, 2022. "Giving begets giving: Positive path dependence as moral consistency," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 204(C), pages 699-718.
    20. Minnich, Aljoscha & Rau, Holger A. & Schlüter, Jan, 2020. "The effects of financial and non-financial incentives on the demand for a sustainable DRT system," University of Göttingen Working Papers in Economics 394, University of Goettingen, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D02 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Institutions: Design, Formation, Operations, and Impact
    • D04 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Microeconomic Policy: Formulation; Implementation; Evaluation
    • D47 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Market Design

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:20378. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.