Blood Donations and Incentives: Evidence from a Field Experiment

Abstract

There is a longstanding concern that material incentives might undermine prosocial motivation, leading to a decrease in blood donations rather than an increase. This paper provides an empirical test of how material incentives aect blood donations in a large-scale eld experiment spanning three months and involving more than 10,000 previous donors. We examine two types of incentive: a lottery ticket and a free cholesterol test. Lottery tickets signicantly increase donations, in particular among less motivated donors. The cholesterol test leads to no discernable impact on usable blood donations. If anything, it creates a small negative selection eect in terms of donations that must be discarded.prosocial behavior, blood donations, material incentives, eld experiment