Government and charity funding of cancer research: public preferences and choices

Abstract

BackgroundIt is unclear how the public would respond to changes in government decisions about how much to spend on medical research in total and specifically on major disease areas such as cancer. Our aim was to elicit the views of the general public in the United Kingdom about how a change in government spending on cancer research might affect their willingness to donate, or to hypothecate a portion of their income tax payments, to cancer research charities.MethodsA web-based stated preference survey was conducted in 2013. Respondents considered hypothetical scenarios regarding changes in the levels of government funding for medical research. In each scenario, respondents were asked to imagine that they could allocate £100 of the income tax they paid this year to one or more medical research charities. They were asked how they wished to allocate the £100 between cancer research charities and medical research charities concerned with diseases other than cancer. After having been given the opportunity to allocate £100 in this way, respondents were then asked if they would want to reduce or increase any personal out-of-pocket donations that they already make to cancer research and non-cancer medical research charities. Descriptive analyses and random effects modelling were used to examine patterns in the response data.ResultsThe general tendency of respondents was to act to offset hypothetical changes in government spending. When asked to imagine that the government had reduced (or increased) its spending on cancer research, the general tendency of respondents was to state that they would give a larger (or smaller) allocation of their income tax to cancer research charities, and to increase (or reduce) their personal out-of-pocket donations to cancer research charities. However, most respondents’ preferred allocation splits and changes in personal donations did not vary much from scenario to scenario. Many of the differences between scenarios were small and non-significant.ConclusionsThe public’s decisions about how much to donate to cancer research or other medical research charities are not greatly affected by (hypothetical) changes to government plans about the amount of public funding of cancer or other medical research.

Comparison of Cancer Burden and Nonprofit Organization Funding Reveals Disparities in Funding Across Cancer Types

“…Conversely, 14 malignancies had no strong association with a stigmatized behavior: leukemia, lymphoma, multiple myeloma, sarcoma, melanoma, and breast, pediatric, neuroendocrine, colorectal, pancreas, prostate, ovarian, endometrial, and brain cancers. 8 The 4 cancer types that were well funded across all 3 metrics (breast cancer, leukemia, lymphoma, and pediatric cancers) all fell into this category. Neuroendocrine cancers were well funded compared with their incidence and were not evaluated for mortality or PYLL because these data are not known.…”

“…After respondents were made aware of this or when asked about hypothetical cuts in governmental cancer research funding, they stated that they would increase donations to cancer research by 18% to compensate. 8 Our study compared the distribution of NPO funding across cancer types versus their respective burdens on society and explored factors that may influence which cancers receive more public support.…”

Can Charitable Donations Compensate for a Reduction in Government Funding? The Role of Information

“…In the situation in which information about budget cuts is available, the total amount donated to KWF is 17 percent higher than in the situation without such information, of which three‐quarters can be attributed to substitution (revenues that would otherwise have gone to other charities) and one‐quarter to recruitment (new revenues). This 17 percent difference in overall income is surprisingly similar to Shah, Sussex, and Hernandez‐Villafuerte (), although it is not statistically significant ( F [2,456] = 1.39, p = .24).…”

“…The net increase in the amount donated to the charity under study is 17 percent among all respondents, which is similar to findings of a similar scenario experiment in the United Kingdom (Shah, Sussex, and Hernandez‐Villafuerte ). Revenues are further increased when citizens pay more attention to the fundraising appeal: among respondents who correctly identified the content of the information in a follow‐up question, the increase in aggregate giving was 43 percent.…”

“…Findings from the Netherlands suggest that the size of the crowding‐out effect depends on the context in which news media report about government policies (de Wit, Bekkers, and Broese van Groenou ). In an experiment that most closely resembles the one presented here, Shah, Sussex, and Hernandez‐Villafuerte () provide respondents with scenarios about levels of government spending on medical research and about hypothetical changes in spending. They find that private giving to cancer research increases by about 17 percent in a situation of government cuts, although most citizens do not change their giving when government spending changes.…”