Blood Donations and Incentives: Evidence from a Field Experiment

Lorenz Goette and Alois Stutzer

Working papers from Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel

Abstract: There is a longstanding concern that material rewards might undermine pro-social motivations, thereby leading to a decrease in blood donations. This paper provides an empirical test of how material rewards affect blood donations in a three-month large-scale field experiment and a fifteen-month follow-up period, involving more than 10,000 previous donors. We examine the efficacy of a lottery ticket as a reward vis-à-vis a standard invitation, an appeal, and a free cholesterol test. The offer of a lottery ticket, on average, increases the probability to donate blood during the experiment by 5.6 percentage points over a baseline donation rate of 46 percent. We find that this effect is driven by less motivated donors. Moreover, no reduction in donations is observed after the experiment.

Keywords: blood donations; field experiment; material rewards; motivation crowding effect; pro-social behavior (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D64 H41 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-11-13
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://edoc.unibas.ch/73000/1/20191125111538_5ddba9cabc160.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Blood donations and incentives: Evidence from a field experiment (2020)
Working Paper: Blood Donations and Incentives: Evidence from a Field Experiment (2019)
Working Paper: Blood donations and incentives: evidence from a field experiment (2008)
Working Paper: Blood donations and incentives: evidence from a field experiment (2008)
Working Paper: Blood Donations and Incentives: Evidence from a Field Experiment (2008)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bsl:wpaper:2019/20

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