Active Decisions and Pro-social Behavior: A Field Experiment on Blood Donation

Alois Stutzer (), Lorenz Goette () and Michael Zehnder ()
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Michael Zehnder: University of Zurich

No 2064, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

Abstract: In this paper, we propose a decision framework where people are individually asked to either actively consent or dissent to some pro-social behavior. We hypothesize that confronting individuals with the choice of engaging in a specific pro-social behavior contributes to the formation of issue-specific altruistic preferences while simultaneously involving a commitment. The hypothesis is tested in a large-scale field experiment on blood donation. We find that this "active-decision" intervention substantially increases the stated willingness to donate blood, as well as the actual donation behavior of people who have not fully formed preferences beforehand.

Keywords: active decision; pro-social behavior; field experiment; blood donation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D64 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo, nep-exp and nep-soc
Date: 2006-04
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Working Paper: Active Decisions and Pro-social Behavior: A Field Experiment on Blood Donation (2006)
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