Nate Posner
@nateposner1
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Consumer behavior PhD student @Columbia_Biz https://t.co/SfLZioBR8S
Joined August 2019
RT @koenfucius: Study by @nateposner1 et al on eight political campaign websites finds prechecking a recurring donation box increases campa….
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RT @ProfEricJohnson: Exciting new paper from @elisugerman and team, including myself. Do people know what they can do to influence their….
nature.com
Nature Climate Change - Individual actions are important to reduce emissions, yet consumers’ carbon incompetence may lead to ineffective efforts. This study demonstrates the consistent...
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RT @koenfucius: Research by @nateposner1 et al suggests defaults can cause people to make decisions by accident that they may later regret—….
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RT @ProfEricJohnson: News: Selected a Winner of the 2024 AMA-EBSCO-RRBM Award for Responsible Research in Marketing for “Dark Defaults: Ho….
pnas.org
In the months before the 2020 U.S. election, several political campaign websites added prechecked boxes (defaults), automatically making all donati...
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RT @posner_jacob: Fascinating conversation with a zoning board member who voted yes despite dozens of residents opposing a development . ht….
whav.net
Part 3 of an occasional series. See also parts one and two. State officials report a housing shortage as demand far outstrips supply. In Haverhill, some residents wonder where they fall in the city’s...
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RT @posner_jacob: I got to go to a federal courthouse last week!. I had to get a special media badge to bring my audio recorder in, but the….
whav.net
As Former Patrolman and School Committee Member Scott W. Wood Jr. seeks damages from Haverhill, a federal court judge pressed for answers on his employment status at the time he ceased being an...
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RT @ProfEricJohnson: Glad to see coverage of our @PNAS paper. Be sure to see nice video of .@andsimonov discussing .
npr.org
A lot of people have experienced some version of this: You sign up for the free one-week trial of some subscription service, only later to be surprised when you get a bill for the deluxe, forever...
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RT @ProfEricJohnson: @NPR @planetmoney @theindicator did a nifty piece interviewig @nateposner1 and I about our Dark Defaults paper with….
npr.org
A lot of people have experienced some version of this: You sign up for the free one-week trial of some subscription service, only later to be surprised when you get a bill for the deluxe, forever...
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RT @danaturetski: Are choice architecture interventions considered ethical? @Rey0208, Jordan Hutchings, @bingfeng5, @dilipsoman, and I expe….
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12/ In 2021 bills to protect donors by.@SenAmyKlobuchar and @SenatorDurbin stalled in congress. More recently, other politicians have used similar deceptive tactics ( ). Small changes to a website can have big consequences!.
yahoo.com
The House GOP conference chair is urging people to donate to the “Official Trump Defense Fund,” but virtually all of that money would go to her campaign.
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11/ So where does that leave us? . The dark default increased donations and caused some to be accidental. This raises an ethical question: how should politicians treat donors? Politicians are public servants; using deceptive tactics to wring cash from their donors feels wrong.
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10/ Who did the dark default affect more?. It impacted small donors (donors who donated less than $200) more than large donors (donors who donated more than $200), causing them to be more likely to start chains and give a higher proportion of their money through weekly donations
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9/ Of course, $2.9 million is a lot less than $43 million. Some people likely started chains on purpose, but others a) may not have realized they made repeating donations, or b) realized they made donations, but did not know that they could, or how, to request refunds.
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8/ Did people donate by accident? . It looks like some did. From refund data, the weekly default caused an increase in refunds of weekly recurring donations by about $2.9 million (green), but did not impact refunds of other types of donations (blue).
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7/ How did the effect change over time? . Once a donor started a chain, they were unlikely to start another. New donors ensured a steady stream of income from repeating chains. The longer defaults were active, the more money they raised per week!
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6/ Donald Trump's campaign for president and the RNC further changed the choice architecture so that donations would continue after the election. After 11/3, these committees received almost half their money from chains of weekly donations -- $34.2 million.
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5/ How big was the effect? . Pretty big! The default caused donors to start between 50,000 and 125,000 chains of recurring donations each week. These chains of donations brought in $43 million in additional revenue to the campaigns (11% of total funds).
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4/ We answer 4 questions: . 1. How big was the effect of the dark default? .2. How did the effect change over time? .3. Did donors make accidental donations? .4. Who does the dark default effect the most? . We use staggered adoption of the default to identify causal effects.
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3/ The checkboxes were often hidden in paragraphs of text. We call this a "dark default" -- a default that operates in part because people do not realize they can opt out. This may cause people to do things they do not intend. So how did the dark default impact donations?
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2/ In 2020, in the NYTimes (, many Republican campaign websites used prechecked boxes to make donations repeat monthly by default unless unchecked. In September and October of that year, the checkbox changed to make donations repeat WEEKLY.
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