Blood donations and incentives: Evidence from a field experiment
Goette, Lorenz Stutzer, Alois
Stutzer, Alois
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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-`a-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
Source Title
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Series/Report No.
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Date
2020-02
DOI
10.1016/j.jebo.2019.11.021
Type
Article