Browsing by Author "Colby, Helen A."

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
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    Association Between Actual and Perceived U.S. COVID-19 Policies and Preventive Behavior
    (Oxford UP, 2021-03-31) Li, Meng; Colby, Helen A.; Kelley School of Business
    BACKGROUND: COVID-19 related policies in the USA can be confusing: some states, but not others, implemented mask mandates mid-pandemic, and states reopened their economies to different levels with different timelines after initial shutdowns. PURPOSE: The current research asks: How well does the public's perception of such policies align with actual policies, and how well do actual versus perceived policies predict the public's mask-wearing and social distancing behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic? METHODS: We conducted a preregistered cross-sectional study among 1,073 online participants who were representative of the U.S. population on age, gender, and education on Monday-Tuesday, July 20-21, 2020. We asked participants which locations they visited in the past weekend, and their mask-wearing and social distancing behaviors at each location. We also measured participants' beliefs about their state's policies on mask mandate and business opening and obtained objective measures of these policies from publicly available data. RESULTS: Perception about the existence of mask mandate was 91% accurate in states with a mask mandate but only 46% accurate in states without one. Perception of state reopening level did not correlate with policy. It was the perceived but not actual state mask mandate that positively predicted both mask-wearing and social distancing, controlling for state COVID-19 cases, demographic factors, and participants' numeracy and COVID-19 history. CONCLUSIONS: The public's perception of state-level mask mandates erred on the side of assuming there is one. Perception of reopening is almost completely inaccurate. Paradoxically, public perception that a mask mandate exists predicts preventive behaviors better than actual mandates.
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    Dodging dietary defaults: Choosing away from healthy nudges
    (Elsevier, 2020-11) Colby, Helen A.; Li, Meng; Chapman, Gretchen; Kelley School of Business - Indianapolis
    The default effect has been identified as a powerful tool to influence behavior; however, the current studies demonstrate that consumers dodge the effects of healthy defaults by selecting away from the healthy default environment, thereby reducing its effect. Two studies with real consequences and three hypothetical scenario studies in restaurant settings demonstrate that healthy defaults promote healthy food choice in the moment, but consumers choose to put themselves in environments with unhealthy defaults over those with healthy defaults. That is, healthy defaults negatively impact sales and willingness of consumers to return to the restaurant that offers them. Study 1 provides initial evidence that a healthy default reduces sales of the product compared to a less healthy default in a real gift shop. Study 2 uses an online survey with real consequences and demonstrates that participants prefer to receive meal kits from a company with unhealthy defaults over one with healthy defaults. Studies 3–5 use hypothetical scenarios to demonstrate the tendency for consumers to dodge healthy defaults. Study 3 shows that a healthy default can drive away future sales. Study 4 demonstrates that advertising a healthy default reduces interest in visiting the restaurant; that is, advertising healthy defaults drives away first-time sales. Finally, Study 5 shows that this dodge effect is robust in a between-subject manipulations using a well-known brand. The results demonstrate that consumers dodge healthy defaults by migrating to environments where unhealthy defaults are in place.
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    Efficiency for Lives, Equality for Everything Else: How Allocation Preference Shifts Across Domains
    (SAGE, 2019-07-01) Li, Meng; Colby, Helen A.; Fernbach, Philip
    The allocation of scarce public resources such as transplant organs and limited public funding involves a trade-off between equality—equal access and efficiency—maximizing total benefit. The current research explores how preferences shift when allocation decisions involve human lives versus when they do not. Fifteen experiments test this question using a variety of allocation scenarios including allocation of lifesaving medical aid, money, road construction, vaccines, and other resources. The results consistently show an increased preference for efficiency, when the allocation involves saving human lives, and equality, when the allocation involves outcomes with other consequences. We found no preference shift when stakes were manipulated in allocations where lives were not on the line, suggesting that the effect cannot be explained by lifesaving resources simply being higher stakes. These findings suggest a unique preference for efficiency for allocations involving life-and-death consequences that has implications for designing and conveying public resource allocation policies.
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    An Empirical Study of Family Law Understanding
    (University of Louisville, 2019) Colby, Helen A.; Ryznar, Margaret; Kelley School of Business - Indianapolis
    This article offers empirical data on the extent of family law understanding among Americans when it comes to creditors’ rights. Our data, composed of surveys, reveal that people’s perceptions of these rights do not change across states despite different legal regimes, and that people who are divorced have no better knowledge than those who have never been divorced. These original findings have important implications for law and policymakers.
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    Goals and Social Comparisons Promote Walking Behavior
    (Sage, 2016) Chapman, Gretchen B.; Colby, Helen A.; Convery, Kimberly; Coups, Elliot J.; Kelley School of Business
    The effectiveness of a pedometer intervention was affected by manipulating the goals given to participants and by providing social comparison feedback about how participants’ performance compared with others. In study 1 (n = 148), university staff members received a low, medium, or high walking goal (10%, 50%, or 100% increase over baseline walking). Participants walked 1358 more steps per day (95% confidence interval [CI], 729, 1985), when receiving a high goal than when receiving a medium goal, but a medium goal did not increase walking relative to a low goal (554 more steps; 95% CI, –71,1179). In study 2 (n = 64), participants received individual feedback only or individual plus social comparison feedback. Participants walked 1120 more steps per day (95% CI, 538, 1703) when receiving social comparison feedback than when receiving only individual feedback. Goals and the performance of others act as reference points and influence the effect that pedometer feedback has on walking behavior, illustrating the applicability of the principles of behavioral economics and social psychology to the design of health behavior interventions.
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    Grouping Promotes Equality: The Effect of Recipient Grouping on Allocation of Limited Medical Resources
    (Sage, 2015) Colby, Helen A.; DeWitt, Jeff; Chapman, Gretchen B.; Kelley School of Business - Indianapolis
    Decisions about allocation of scarce resources, such as transplant organs, often entail a trade-off between efficiency (i.e., maximizing the total benefit) and fairness (i.e., dividing resources equally). In three studies, we used a hypothetical scenario for transplant-organ allocation to examine allocation to groups versus individuals. Study 1 demonstrated that allocation to individuals is more efficient than allocation to groups. Study 2 identified a factor that triggers the use of fairness over efficiency: presenting the beneficiaries as one arbitrary group rather than two. Specifically, when beneficiaries were presented as one group, policymakers tended to allocate resources efficiently, maximizing total benefit. However, when beneficiaries were divided into two arbitrary groups (by hospital name), policymakers divided resources more equally across the groups, sacrificing efficiency. Study 3 replicated this effect using a redundant attribute (prognosis) to create groups and found evidence for a mediator of the grouping effect—the use of individualizing information to rationalize a more equitable allocation decision.
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    Savings, subgoals, and reference points
    (Society for Judgment and Decision Making, 2013-01) Colby, Helen A.; Chapman, Gretchen B.
    Decision makers often save money for a specific goal by forgoing discretionary consumption and instead putting the money toward the savings goal. We hypothesized that reference points can be exploited to enhance this type of saving. In two hypothetical scenario studies, subjects made judgments of their likelihood to forgo a small expenditure in order to put the money toward the savings goal. In Experiment 1, judgments were higher if the savings goal was presented as composed of weekly subgoals (e.g., save $60 per week to buy a $180 iPod). Experiment 2 replicated this finding and demonstrated that the subgoal manipulation increased judgments of likelihood to save money only when the money saved from the foregone consumption would allow the decision maker to meet the weekly subgoal exactly (not under or overshoot it). These results suggest a reference point mechanism and point to ways that behavioral decision research can be harnessed to improve economic behaviors.