Blood donations and incentives: evidence from a field experiment

Lorenz Goette () and Alois Stutzer ()

No 08-3, Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

Abstract: There is a longstanding concern that material incentives might undermine prosocial motivation, leading to a decrease in blood donations rather than an increase. This paper provides an empirical test of how material incentives affect blood donations in a large-scale field experiment spanning three months and involving more than 10,000 previous donors. We examine two types of incentive: a lottery ticket and a free cholesterol test. Lottery tickets significantly increase donations, in particular among less motivated donors. The cholesterol test leads to no discernable impact on usable blood donations. If anything, it creates a small negative selection effect in terms of donations that must be discarded.

Keywords: Human behavior; Altruism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-evo, nep-exp and nep-soc
Date: 2008
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Related works:
Working Paper: Blood Donations and Incentives: Evidence from a Field Experiment (2008)
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