Spillovers of prosocial motivation: Evidence from an intervention study on blood donors

Adrian Bruhin, Lorenz Goette, Simon Haenni and Lingqing Jiang

Journal of Health Economics, 2020, vol. 70, issue C

Abstract: Blood donations are increasingly important for medical procedures, while meeting demand is challenging. This paper studies the role of spillovers arising from social interactions in the context of voluntary blood donations. We analyze a large-scale intervention among pairs of blood donors who live at the same street address. A quasi-random phone call provides the instrument for identifying the extent to which the propensity to donate spills over within these pairs. Spillovers transmit 41% to 46% of the behavioral impulse from one donor to the peer. This creates a significant social multiplier, ranging between 1.7 and 1.85. There is no evidence that these spillovers lead to intertemporal substitution. Taken together, our findings indicate that policy interventions have a substantially larger effect when targeted towards pairs instead of isolated individuals.

Keywords: Voluntary blood donation; Social interaction; Bivariate probit (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C36 C93 D90 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Spillovers of Prosocial Motivation: Evidence from an Intervention Study on Blood Donors (2015)
Working Paper: Spillovers of Prosocial Motivation: Evidence from an Intervention Study on Blood Donors (2014)
Working Paper: Spillovers of Prosocial Motivation: Evidence from an Intervention Study on Blood Donors (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jhecon:v:70:y:2020:i:c:s0167629619304965

DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2019.102244

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