Blood donation motivation in the United States and Russia: What keeps donors coming back?

Abstract

What keeps regular blood donors coming back, despite the inconvenience and discomfort, thereby maintaining the community's blood supply? We approached 494 people waiting to give blood, 229 Americans and 265 Russians, with a survey that assessed their motivations to donate, their contextual emotions, and their future donation intentions. The Russian sample was older, and many were regulars at the donation centre. The U.S. sample was younger, attending a 3‐day college blood drive. Multigroup path analysis results showed that, as hypothesised, in both samples, autonomous donation motivations predicted contextual emotions and future donation intentions. Furthermore, contextual emotions partially mediated the motivation‐to‐future intentions effect. Small differences in results for the two samples, as well as differences in the two national systems for maintaining blood supplies, are discussed.

Understanding the motivations of food bank volunteers: Applying self‐determination theory and functional motivations theory

“…Still, the sample was large and replicated the earlier results from a different volunteer activity (Sheldon et al, 2016), lending some confidence in the results. Finally, this study did not measure peoples' intentions to continue volunteering, which was examined by Sheldon et al (2022) in their study of volunteering to give blood. Such findings would help address the retention question, especially if they are confirmed within new longitudinal studies.…”

“…However, instead of measuring burnout as an additional outcome, we measured subjective well‐being (SWB) and autonomy, competence, and relatedness need‐satisfaction in the volunteering context (Ryan & Deci, 2017). One important reinforcement for a behaviour can be the satisfaction and happiness it provides the person (Sheldon et al, 2022). We expected that more autonomous motivation would be associated with greater need‐satisfaction and SWB, as in much past SDT research (Martela & Sheldon, 2019; Ryan & Deci, 2017).…”

A virtual reality paradigm simulating blood donation serves as a platform to test interventions to promote donation

“…Negative emotional experiences can be detrimental to donor recruitment and retention. General negative mood is associated with lower intentions to donate blood 27 . Turning to specific emotions, anticipated and experienced anxiety is negatively associated with intention to donate and donation behavior 22 , 28 – 30 .…”