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Not all Incentives Wash out the Warm Glow: The Case of Blood Donation Revisited

Author

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  • Joan Costa Font
  • Mireia Jofre-Bonet
  • Steven T. Yen
Abstract
The issue of the nature of the altruism inherent in blood donation and the perverse effects of financial rewards for blood and/or organ donation has been recently revisited in the economic literature with limited consensus. As Titmuss (1970) famously pointed out, providing monetary incentives to blood donors may crowd out blood supply as purely altruistic donors may feel less inclined to donate if a reward is involved - in addition to having the effect of reducing blood quality. In this paper we examine how favouring different types of incentives are related to the likelihood of donating blood by exploiting a large sample representative of the population of fifteen European countries in 2002 containing information on both donation and attitudes towards incentives. Our results show those who have donated are less likely to favour monetary rewards for blood donation but are more likely to favour non-monetary ones. This is consistent with the idea that while monetary rewards may crowd out blood donation, non-monetary rewards do not.

Suggested Citation

  • Joan Costa Font & Mireia Jofre-Bonet & Steven T. Yen, 2012. "Not all Incentives Wash out the Warm Glow: The Case of Blood Donation Revisited," CEP Discussion Papers dp1157, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    • Handle: RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp1157
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    2. Joan Costa-Font & Caroline Rudisill & Maximilian Salcher-Konrad, 2021. "‘Relative Consent’ or ‘Presumed Consent’? Organ donation attitudes and behaviour," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 22(1), pages 5-16, February.
    3. Carpenter, Jeffrey, 2021. "The shape of warm glow: Field experimental evidence from a fundraiser," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 191(C), pages 555-574.
    4. Jennifer Kunz & Stefan Linder, 2012. "Organizational Control and Work Effort -- Another Look at the Interplay of Rewards and Motivation," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(3), pages 591-621, March.
    5. repec:zbw:vfsc14:100605 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Francesco Cappa & Federica Rosso & Darren Hayes, 2019. "Monetary and Social Rewards for Crowdsourcing," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(10), pages 1-14, May.
    7. Fang, Xing, 2022. "Why we hide good deeds? The selfless and anonymous donation behavior in crowdfunding," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    8. Vinh Pham, 2021. "Cash, Funeral Benefits or Nothing at All: How to Incentivize Family Consent for Organ Donation," Review of Behavioral Economics, now publishers, vol. 8(2), pages 147-192, July.
    9. Vinh Pham, 2021. "Cash, Funeral Benefits or Nothing at All: How to Incentivize Family Consent for Organ Donation," Review of Behavioral Economics, now publishers, vol. 8(2), pages 147-192, July.
    10. Yew-Kwang NG, 2016. "Extending Economic Analysis to Analyze Policy Issues More Broadly," Economic Growth Centre Working Paper Series 1609, Nanyang Technological University, School of Social Sciences, Economic Growth Centre.
    11. Klara Greffin & Silke Schmidt & Linda Schönborn & Holger Muehlan, 2021. "“Blood for Blood”? Personal Motives and Deterrents for Blood Donation in the German Population," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(8), pages 1-31, April.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Altruism; blood donation; incentives; nudging; recursive system; warm glow;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • I38 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification

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