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Blood Donations and Incentives: Evidence from a Field Experiment

Goette, Lorenz and Stutzer, Alois. (2019) Blood Donations and Incentives: Evidence from a Field Experiment. WWZ Working Paper, 2019 (20). Basel.

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Official URL: https://edoc.unibas.ch/73000/

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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-à-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.
Faculties and Departments:06 Faculty of Business and Economics > Departement Wirtschaftswissenschaften > Professuren Wirtschaftswissenschaften > Politische Ökonomie (Stutzer)
12 Special Collections > WWZ Publications > WWZ Discussion Papers and Working Papers
UniBasel Contributors:Stutzer, Alois
Item Type:Working Paper
Publisher:WWZ
Number of Pages:56
Note:Publication type according to Uni Basel Research Database: Discussion paper / Internet publication
Language:English
Identification Number:
  • handle: RePEc:bsl:wpaper:2019/20
edoc DOI:
Last Modified:02 Dec 2019 16:14
Deposited On:02 Dec 2019 16:14

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