Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/240406 
Year of Publication: 
2019
Series/Report no.: 
WWZ Working Paper No. 2019/20
Publisher: 
University of Basel, Center of Business and Economics (WWZ), Basel
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.
Subjects: 
blood donations
field experiment
material rewards
motivation crowding effect
pro-social behavior
JEL: 
C93
D64
H41
I18
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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