When Do People Prefer Carrots to Sticks? A Robust “Matching Effect” in Policy Evaluation
For a policy to succeed, it must not only be effective in changing behavior but must also be accepted by stakeholders. Here, we report seven sets of studies demonstrating strong framing effects on the acceptance of equivalent policies. Policies targeting desirable voluntary behavior are preferred wh...
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Published in | Management science Vol. 63; no. 12; pp. 4261 - 4276 |
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Main Authors | , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Linthicum
INFORMS
01.12.2017
Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | For a policy to succeed, it must not only be effective in changing behavior but must also be accepted by stakeholders. Here, we report seven sets of studies demonstrating strong framing effects on the acceptance of equivalent policies. Policies targeting desirable voluntary behavior are preferred when they are framed as
advantaging
those who act desirably (rather than disadvantaging those who do not). Conversely, policies targeting obligations are preferred when they are framed as
disadvantaging
those who fail to act desirably (rather than advantaging those who do). These differences in policy acceptance do not result from common causes of framing effects, such as a misunderstanding of outcomes or insufficient deliberation about the implications. Rather, the framing effects we document follow from beliefs about when punishment is and is not appropriate. We conclude with a field experiment demonstrating framing effects in a setting where policy acceptance directly affects respondents’ outcomes.
Data, as supplemental material, are available at
https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2016.2539
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This paper was accepted by Yuval Rottenstreich, judgment and decision making
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ISSN: | 0025-1909 1526-5501 |
DOI: | 10.1287/mnsc.2016.2539 |