Another, they say, is that most people perceive a default as an authoritative recommendation. One is natural human inertia, or laziness, that favors making the quick, easy choice instead of exerting the mental energy to make a different one. But they say there are other forces that make the default path hard to resist. In much of Europe, people must choose not to donate.ĭefaults, according to economists and psychologists, frame how a person is presented with a choice. In the United States, people must choose to become an organ donor. By contrast, nearly all Austrians, French and Portuguese consent to donate theirs. in some African nations where AIDS is widespread has surged since the test became a regular prenatal procedure and women had to opt out if they didn’t want it.Ī study published in 2003 showed that while large majorities of Americans approved of organ donations, only about a quarter consented to donate their own. And the percentage of pregnant women tested for H.I.V. In decision-making, examples of the default preference abound: Workers are far more likely to save in retirement plans if enrollment is the automatic option. Sunstein, a Harvard Law School professor who is now on leave and is working for the Obama administration. Thaler, an economist at the University of Chicago and a frequent contributor to the Sunday Business section, and Cass R. The field has been popularized by the 2008 book “ Nudge,” by Richard H. For behavioral economists, psychologists and marketers, defaults are part of a rich field of study that explores “decision architecture” - how a choice is presented or framed. The role of defaults in steering decisions is by no means confined to the online world. Choice, in theory, is one click away.īut most people, of course, never make that single click. Rivals like Bing, the general search engine from Microsoft, and partial competitors like Yelp, an online review and listing service for local businesses, have their own Web sites and other paths of distribution. Most economists agree that Google’s default deals aren’t anticompetitive. Google has many such arrangements with Web sites. Today, Google pays an estimated $100 million a year to Mozilla, coming from shared ad revenue, to be the default search engine on Mozilla’s popular Firefox Web browser in the United States and other countries. Indeed, Google made a big bet early in its history: In 2002, it reached a deal with AOL, guaranteeing a payment of $50 million to come from advertising revenue if AOL made Google its automatic first-choice search engine - the one shown to users by default. “Clearly,” he added, “they are not taking any chances.” “If competition really were just ‘one click away,’ as Google suggests,” he said, “why have they invested so heavily to be the default choice on Web browsers and mobile phones?” In a Senate hearing last month about Google, Jeremy Stoppelman, the chief executive of Yelp, pointed to that reality in his testimony. But in practice, the power of digital distribution channels, default product settings and traditional human behavior often matters most. IN the wide-open Web, choice and competition are said to be merely “one click away,” to use Google’s favorite phrase.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |