Do Defaults Save Lives?
Johnson and Goldstein's policy forum is the piece that carried the default effect out of economics and into public life. Using a combination of national data and experiments, they examine what the consent default does to the decision to become an organ donor, and report large effects, with countries that require citizens to opt out well ahead of countries that require them to opt in. The authors present this as evidence that default options can produce striking differences in expressed preference with significant economic consequences. It is a policy forum rather than a full research paper, and the medical literature that followed has been considerably more careful about what else differs between those countries. This publication cites it as the origin of the popular claim and keeps the later qualifications attached to it.
Johnson and Goldstein's policy forum is the piece that carried the default effect out of economics and into public life. Using a combination of national data and experiments, they examine what the consent default does to the decision to become an organ donor, and report large effects, with countries that require citizens to opt out well ahead of countries that require them to opt in. The authors present this as evidence that default options can produce striking differences in expressed preference with significant economic consequences. It is a policy forum rather than a full research paper, and the medical literature that followed has been considerably more careful about what else differs between those countries. This publication cites it as the origin of the popular claim and keeps the later qualifications attached to it.
Written from the abstract, OpenAlex.
What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
Johnson, E. J., & Goldstein, D. (2003). 'Do defaults save lives?' Science, 302(5649), 1338-1339. The policy forum that carried the consent-default comparison into public life. doi:10.1126/science.1091721
Where we use it
- Why You Never Change the Setting, Why We Act
Reliability of this reference
The link below was matched against the publisher's record on title, first author and year, and all three agree.
The source
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1091721
DOI: 10.1126/science.1091721