Preference for Equity As a Framing Effect
Abstract
BACKGROUND: In previous studies, the authors found that most people, given a fixed budget, would rather offer a less effective screening test to 100% of a Medicaid population than a more effective test to 50% of the population. In a subsequent study, the authors found that the number of people preferring the less effective screening test was dramatically reduced when the percentage of Medicaid enrollees receiving it was less than 100. In this article, 2 new studies are reported that explore whether people's preferences for equity versus efficiency are susceptible to a framing effect. METHODS: In 2 studies, the authors presented subjects with multiple scenarios involving screening tests that vary in the proportion of people who could receive the tests within a budget constraint and the number of people whose lives each test would save. Across scenarios, the proportion of Medicaid enrollees who could receive each test was varied, as was the question of whether scenarios involved Medicaid enrollees from the same or a different state. In addition, the authors varied the order in which subjects received the scenarios. RESULTS: In the 1st study, people's preferences for equity over efficiency varied significantly depending on the way situations were framed. Preference for equity was stronger when the more widely distributed choice covered the entire population than when it covered only half the population (P < 0.001). In addition, people's preferences were susceptible to order effe…
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Prospect theory demonstrates that a decision maker's perceived utility can be subjectively influenced by the manner in which the information is framed (as a loss/gain or risk/no risk), what reference is being used to evaluate the options, and the relationship/salience of the alternative to the decision maker.
“Prospect theory, however, demonstrates that a decision maker's perceived utility can be subjectively influenced by the manner in which the information is framed (as a loss/gain or risk/no risk), what reference is being used to evaluate the options, and the relationship/salience of the alternative to the decision maker [47,70-74].”
From Rationality versus reality: the challenges of evidence-based decision making for health policy makers (2010) · cites this paper as [70]
In the Asian disease problem and replications, the majority of participants will select their program choices based on how the information regarding lives saved/fatalities rates is framed.
“Consistently, the majority of participants will select their program choices based on how the information regarding lives saved/fatalities rates is framed [28,70,72-74].”
From Rationality versus reality: the challenges of evidence-based decision making for health policy makers (2010) · cites this paper as [70]
Decision-making research has demonstrated that individual utility is a subjective factor and is influenced by personal preferences, desires/wants of the decision maker, degree of emotion involved in the decision, the degree of decision risk with respect to outcome certainty, and personal values.
“Decision-making research has demonstrated that individual utility is a subjective factor and is influenced by personal preferences, desires/wants of the decision maker, degree of emotion involved in the decision, the degree of decision risk with respect to outcome certainty, and personal values [46,48,70,75].”
From Rationality versus reality: the challenges of evidence-based decision making for health policy makers (2010) · cites this paper as [70]
Cited by
Sorted by citations
McCaughey, D., & Bruning, N. S. (2010) · Implementation Science · doi:10.1186/1748-5908-5-39 · Cited by 160 · see citing works
- Authors
- Ubel, P. A., Baron, J., & Asch, D. A.
- Venue
- Medical Decision Making
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2001-05-01
- Volume
- 21
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 180-189
- ISSN
- 0272-989X (ISSN-L)
- 0000-0000
- OpenAlex
- W4229905454
- Cited by
- 71
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 19 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 2 · 2020: 3 · 2018: 2 · 2017: 1 · 2016: 1 · 2015: 4 · 2014: 3 · 2013: 2 · 2012: 1
- FWCI
- 1.92
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Medical Decision Making (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health (5r01ca078052-02)
- National Cancer Institute (R01 CA78052-01)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Health Systems, Economic Evaluations, Quality of Life
- Keywords
- framing effects, equity, decision-making, risk preferences, fairness
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Aged, Analysis of Variance, Attitude to Health, Choice Behavior, Colonic Neoplasms, Female, Health Maintenance Organizations, Humans, Male, Mass Screening, Medicaid, Middle Aged, Surveys and Questionnaires, United States, Philadelphia, Health Care Rationing, Effect Modifier, Epidemiologic
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
