Economic Rewards to Motivate Blood Donations

Abstract

Field-based evidence suggests that guidelines against economic rewards to motivate blood donors should be reconsidered.

Incentives for prosocial activities

“…For example, in one incentive program in Italy, intended to increase blood donations, donors received a full paid day off from work, with the cost covered by the central government. That was a very costly reward, and the extra blood collected as a result might not have been enough to compensate for the cost of rewarding everyone who donated, including those who would have donated without the incentive [3]. But, again, the high cost of this incentive program is an exception, according to the current evidence, rather than the rule.…”

“…Importantly, these incentives have worked to increase blood donations without attracting a larger share of donors whose characteristics make them undesirable or even ineligible to donate. Additional analyses also find evidence of a "social spillover" effect of incentives, whereby individuals who have information about the rewards offered at a blood drive plausibly spread the word to other potential donors who are unaware of the rewards, encouraging them to donate blood as well [3].…”

“…When such long-term evidence was available, studies did not find that the provision of the prosocial or intrinsically motivated activity decreased. For example, blood donors did not donate less after an incentive was removed than they did before the incentive was introduced [3]. Also, in a field experiment of the effects of monitoring plus incentives for attendance in informal education centers in rural India, teacher absenteeism declined significantly in the schools offering the incentive ("treatment") both during and after the treatment period ( Figure 1) [10].…”

“…Surveys and laboratory experiments document a negative impact of compensation on the willingness of individuals to donate. Studies also find that people who are more responsive to economic incentives are more likely than others to report behaviors or disease histories that would make them ineligible to be donors [3].…”

“…In particular, the value of the additional provision of a given activity motivated by the incentive may not compensate for the additional costs of providing rewards to all those performing the activity (or the cost of reaching a desired level for an activity), including those who would have supplied the activity even without the external incentive. The balance of the evidence in the long-term studies shows, however, that the incentives were cost-effective [3], [10].…”