TY - JOUR
T1 - It Is All About Control
T2 - Understanding Reluctance to Register for Organ Donation
AU - Katz, Hagai
AU - Blekher, Maria
AU - Bosch, David A.
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors wish to thank Ayelet Gneezy (UCSD Rady School of Management) for her imperative contribution to the research that produced this article. They are thankful to Uri Gneezy (UCSD Rady School of Management) and to Hila Riemer (BGU Guilford Glazer Faculty of Business and Management) for their comments on earlier versions of the article. They thank the reviewers for their insightful comments, which helped them bring the article to its current form. The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2018.
PY - 2019/6/1
Y1 - 2019/6/1
N2 - This article tests the theory that anxiety about death causes feelings of lack of control, which, with other factors, results in reluctance to donate organs, despite endorsement of the act. Using a survey of U.S. and U.K. registered organ donors and unregistered adults (N = 777), we tested the impact of trust in medical professionals, perceived importance of information on the transplant processes, anxiety regarding loss of control at one’s end-of-life, and a prosocial view of organ donation on willingness to register as donor. Structural analyses show that control mediated the associations of trust and information with willingness, while prosocial did not predict willingness. The findings explain the gap between stated attitudes and actual behavior, and suggest that framing donor card registration and organ donation as a way to gain control over the loss of agency in death and dying may encourage organ donation.
AB - This article tests the theory that anxiety about death causes feelings of lack of control, which, with other factors, results in reluctance to donate organs, despite endorsement of the act. Using a survey of U.S. and U.K. registered organ donors and unregistered adults (N = 777), we tested the impact of trust in medical professionals, perceived importance of information on the transplant processes, anxiety regarding loss of control at one’s end-of-life, and a prosocial view of organ donation on willingness to register as donor. Structural analyses show that control mediated the associations of trust and information with willingness, while prosocial did not predict willingness. The findings explain the gap between stated attitudes and actual behavior, and suggest that framing donor card registration and organ donation as a way to gain control over the loss of agency in death and dying may encourage organ donation.
KW - need for control
KW - need for information
KW - organ donation
KW - theory of planned behavior
KW - trust
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85059329087&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/0899764018807755
DO - 10.1177/0899764018807755
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85059329087
SN - 0899-7640
VL - 48
SP - 665
EP - 680
JO - Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly
JF - Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly
IS - 3
ER -