Do Defaults Save Lives?
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References and Notes
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We used a times series analysis to account for possible changes in transplant technology and infrastructure, as well as the effects of continuing public education campaigns.
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An alternative advocated by the American Medical Association (30) is mandated choice, which imposes the cost of making an active decision on all. This practice is currently employed in the state of Virginia, but, consistent with the constructive preferences perspective, about 24% of the first million Virginians asked said they were undecided (31).
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This research has been supported by the Columbia University Center for Decision Science and the Columbia Business School Center for Excellence in E-Business. We thank L. Roels for providing the data on actual donation rates.
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Volume 302 | Issue 5649
21 November 2003
21 November 2003
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© 2003 American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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RE: A third small box that can change the course of history
In the 2016 EU membership referendum, UK voters were offered a binary choice between the status quo (remaining a member of the EU) or changing the status quo (leaving the EU) (See Fig. at https://osf.io/79q3d/?view_only=d53b354496cc4358a827d0eb494d6f3a). The majority vote (MV) was 'leave', which won by 51.9% to 48.1%, making millions of people regret their choice.
One challenge is whether a seemingly irrelevant 'choice architecture' [e.g., (1-5)] could have expressed the 'true' preferences of voters and therefore prevented those who experience 'Bregret' from organising marches for a second Brexit referendum.
A recent survey in August 2019 (6-7) showed that adding a third option/box, that is, 'Not decided yet □', to hypothetical 'second Brexit referendum' voting forms, can result in 3.2% of voters selecting this third option. The MV (retaining the status quo) was decreased from 68.7% to 66.7% (n = 2131 Prolific Academic respondents from the UK). This decrease in MV percentage is larger than 1.9%, which was above the percentage change needed to avoid Brexit in the 2016 referendum.
Another well-matched evidence is that the addition of a third box successfully 'forced' the reversal of the narrow margin MV in a 'waste disposal' problem (n = 2150 SoJump respondents from China). That is, the MV (51.4%) was in favour of changing the status quo (build a new waste disposal plant nearby) in the two-box condition. However, in the three-box condition, 2.6% of voters selected 'Not decided yet', shifting the MV (48.8%) to 'maintain the status quo' (without waste disposal plants).
Given that adding the third small box can easily decrease or even reverse the MV, we suggest that policymakers carefully determine whether a seemingly irrelevant third small box should be added in referendum forms, specifically when public opinion is fairly evenly divided.
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6. S. Li et al., chinaXiv:201908.00073 [in Chinese].
7. S. Li et al., https://osf.io/79q3d/?view_only=d53b354496cc4358a827d0eb494d6f3a