The problem
In Victoria, families need to consent to organ donation. Nine out of 10 families will consent to organ donation if a person has registered their intent to donate. But while 69% of Australians say they would donate their organs, only 33% of the adult population has registered. This is an example of the intention-action gap.

Behavioural insights concept: The intention-action gap refers to the difference between what people say they want to do, and what they actually do. It occurs in many facets of our lives. From bringing a reusable cup to the coffee shop, to doing more exercise, or deciding not to eat the entire chocolate bar in one go. Often there is something in our surroundings, or a feature of the choice itself, that prevents our best intentions occurring.

Policies frequently have unintended consequences, or simply don’t work. Rigorous evaluation techniques, such as randomised controlled trials, help policy makers understand whether a policy is working, and for whom. In instances where a randomised controlled trial is not possible, we can still gather useful evidence to test the effectiveness of policies.

What we did
We tested five behaviourally informed messages against a control message via banner ads on the VicRoads ‘renew your licence’ website (to harness the historic association between registering to be an organ donor and applying for a driver’s licence). Two messages were tested at a time, with a “winner stays on” approach. Visitors to the site were randomly assigned to either the control group or a message we were testing.

Whichever message ‘won’ by producing the most registrations was then tested against another message. Although ideally we would have tested all the messages at the same time, the data gathered provided evidence for the messages we might trial in the future.