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 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: prosocial behavior; blood donations; material incentives; field experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D64 H41 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

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https://edoc.unibas.ch/16289/1/05_08.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 (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)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bsl:wpaper:2008/05

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