Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/35985 
Year of Publication: 
2009
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 4567
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
We examine how economic incentives affect pro-social behavior through the analysis of a unique dataset with information on more than 14,000 American Red Cross blood drives. Our findings are consistent with blood donors responding to incentives in a standard way; offering donors economic incentives significantly increases turnout and blood units collected, and more so the greater the incentive's monetary value. In addition, there is no disproportionate increase in donors who come to a drive but are ineligible to donate when incentives are offered. Further evidence from a small-scale field experiment corroborates these findings and confirms that donors are motivated by the economic value of the items offered. We also find that a substantial fraction of the increase in donations due to incentives may be explained by donors substituting away from neighboring drives toward drives where rewards are offered, and the likelihood of this substitution is higher the higher the monetary value of the incentive offered and if neighboring drives do not offer incentives. Thus, extrinsic incentives motivate pro-social behavior, but unless substitution effects are also considered, the effect of incentives may be overestimated.
Subjects: 
Incentives
altruism
public good provision
pro-social behavior
public health
JEL: 
D12
D64
I18
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
456.55 kB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.