Increasing Organ Donor Registrations with Behavioral Interventions: A Large-Scale Field Experiment

Although prior research has advanced our understanding of the drivers of organ donation attitudes and intentions — e.g., knowledge and altruistic motivation — little is known about how to increase actual registrations. Some empirical evidence suggests that labor intensive educational programs and costly mass media campaigns might be effective for increasing registrations, however, these are neither scalable nor economical solutions. To address these limitations, we conducted a large-scale field experiment (N = 3,330) in the province of Ontario where we tested four low-cost, easy-to-scale behavioral interventions targeting knowledge and altruistic motives on actual in-person registrations. Two of our interventions, providing an information brochure, and prompting perspective taking with a reciprocal altruism persuasive message (If you needed a transplant would you have one? If so, please help save lives and register today) nearly doubled individuals’ likelihood of registering as an organ donor. This paper contributes to the limited empirical evidence for applied behavioral solutions that reduce the intention-action gap in the context of organ donation and has important implications for public policy and enhancing societal welfare.