Understanding Motivations to Donate Blood: Incentives and Reputations

• Applicant: Professor Egon Tripodi, Ph.D., since 10/2022
• Subject Area: Economic Policy, Applied Economics
• Term: from 2018 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 411047502

In medical emergencies, blood transfusions are often indispensable to save a life. Most countries rely exclusively on voluntary donations of blood. While the costs of donations are borne by the donor, the benefits accrue to society at large. Thus, volunteer blood donations constitute a textbook example of a public good. Against the backdrop of supply shortages, several countries are now re-evaluating incentivized or paid donations as one of the policy tools. However, incentives in the context of blood donations can interact with donors’ intrinsic or altruistic motivations, with the potential to render them more or less effective than what the standard model predicts. In this project, we propose field experiments that allow us to structurally estimate a general class of utility functions in which incentives interact with other motivations. The project is divided into two work packages: 1. Structural Estimation of Image Concerns. Previous studies analyze monetary incentives to increase blood donations with mixed results. The standard economic model suggests that the supply of blood should increase with incentives. Behavioural theories of social norms, image concerns, and warm glow suggest that incentives may crowd out donations. We propose a large-scale natural field experiment that manipulates the type of incentives, their intensity, and visibility. Recent developments in mathematical programming techniques render our unique experimental design ideal for providing the first structural estimation of the social signalling model in the context of a prosocial activity. 2. Understanding Selection into Uncompensated Prosocial Activities. Germans can choose between donating at a hospital/commercial blood bank (paid €25) and donating at the Red Cross (unpaid). Remarkably, unpaid donations represent more than 70% of all donations in the country every year. Our developments of the social signalling theory suggest that image concerns can make such "dual markets" more efficient through sorting. This project proposes a test of novel hypotheses in the field.The previous literature largely relies on reduced-form identification of the qualitative features of models of image motivation. By contrast, the experiments in this project are designed explicitly to identify a structural model of donor motivation, in which incentives may interact with other motivations, such as image motivation or altruism. It constitutes the first formal identification of such preferences and allows us to perform counterfactual policy analyses and assess their welfare effects. Beyond the domain of blood donations, the work packages contribute to a better understanding of prosocial motivations more generally and develop valuable theoretical and quantitative tools. In addition, they develop specific behavioural interventions that can be put to work in the domain of blood donations and related areas.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Ehemaliger Antragsteller: Professor Dr. Lorenz Götte, until 10/2022