Restoring Public Legitimacy to the Nonprofit Sector: A Survey Experiment Using Descriptions of Nonprofit Ownership

The authors argue that declining legitimacy of the nonprofit sector in American society can be traced to a limited public understanding of nonprofit enterprise. In this article, they explore the nature and correlates of ownership-related expectations in medical care. Data from a new national survey document that most Americans believe that ownership affects medical care. However, about a third of the public does not understand ownership; those who do not have decidedly less favorable attitudes toward nonprofits. Expectations for nonprofits are more positive among those who feel vulnerable to bad outcomes in medical care, but are substantially more negative among minority groups. Using an experimental design incorporated into the survey, the authors demonstrate that having additional information about ownership improves expectations about nonprofit performance but to varying degrees, depending on the content of the explanation, the particular dimension of performance, and the level of prior understanding.