Foregone and predicted futures: challenges of opportunity cost neglect and impact bias for public participation in policymaking

ABSTRACT

Deliberative democracy fosters greater involvement of the public in policymaking. However, psychological challenges involved in eliciting policy preferences receive little attention in this context. This study addresses the implications of opportunity cost neglect (OCN) and impact bias for policy preferences. Utilizing a survey experiment among residents of peripheral towns in Israel, we examine preferences regarding investment in rail infrastructure in peripheral areas. In line with psychological studies on OCN, we find evidence that priming awareness to alternatives can de-bias OCN in policy preferences. However, this method is less effective for people who exhibit impact bias (respondents for whom the policy is new), presenting a serious challenge to the validity of policy preferences of those who are expected to be most affected by the considered policy. This paper offers a theoretical contribution to the relationship between OCN and impact bias, and discusses the practical implications for public participation in policymaking.

KEYWORDS:

• Deliberative democracy
• impact bias
• public preferences
• opportunity cost neglect

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Eyal Pe’er, Omer Yair, Shoham Choshen-Hillel and Anat Gofen for their helpful comments. We thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 It should be noted that expert policy makers are not immune to behavioral heuristics and biases (e.g., elected politicians: Sheffer et al., 2018; Bureaucrats: Olsen, 2013; Judges: Gazal-Ayal & Sulitzeanu-Kenan, 2010; and legal experts: Statman et al., 2020).

2 We are grateful for the helpful specification suggestions of an anonymous reviewer.

3 They explain this by the age differences between the two samples used in the studies (Frederick et al., 2009 relied on university students rather than the general population).

4 Asking about attractiveness of the town is related to the common policy discourse regarding the ability of rail connection to attract households and businesses to the town, as well as maintain the current population. Outside migration is typically caused by relatively strong population.

5 Note that matching and balancing techniques are partial solutions for the robustness of observational analyses (Rosenbaum, 2020).

6 The interaction between ‘prospective impact’ and the experimental condition is statistically insignificant (p = .799).

7 A ceiling effect may offer an alternative explanation for this interaction. Specifically, that respondents from rail-unconnected cities (high impact bias) were restricted from expressing more support for the focal policy under the control condition; however, only 68.5 per cent of these respondents opted for the ‘strongly support’ category, four percentage points more than respondents from rail-connected cities, suggesting that the potential for a ceiling effect is low, i.e., a sufficient proportion of respondents could still opt for a higher level of policy support. Additionally, the (low) potential for a ceiling effect is very similar for the two groups of respondents (rail-connected/unconnected); therefore, even if a ceiling effect exists, it cannot account for the different treatment effects.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Israel Science Foundation: [Grant Number 2026/16].

Notes on contributors

Galit Cohen-Blankshtain

Galit Cohen-Blankhstain is a senior lecturer in the Federmann School of Public Policy and the Geography Department. Her research is focused on transportation policy and public participation in policy processes.

Raanan Sulitzeanu-Kenan

Raanan Sulitzeanu-Kenan is an associate professor of political science and public policy at the Hebrew University, and head of the Federmann School of Public Policy. His research interests include political behavior, behavioral public administration, and empirical legal studies.