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Not all incentives wash out the warm glow: the case of blood donation revisited

Costa-Font, Joan ORCID: 0000-0001-7174-7919, Jofre-Bonet, Mireia and Yen, Steven T. (2012) Not all incentives wash out the warm glow: the case of blood donation revisited. CEP discussion papers (CEPDP1157). Centre for Economic Performance, London, UK.

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Abstract

The issue of the nature of the altruism inherent in blood donation and the perverse effects of financial rewards for blood and/or organ donation has been recently revisited in the economic literature with limited consensus. As Titmuss (1970) famously pointed out, providing monetary incentives to blood donors may crowd out blood supply as purely altruistic donors may feel less inclined to donate if a reward is involved – in addition to having the effect of reducing blood quality. In this paper we examine how favouring different types of incentives are related to the likelihood of donating blood by exploiting a large sample representative of the population of fifteen European countries in 2002 containing information on both donation and attitudes towards incentives. Our results show those who have donated are less likely to favour monetary rewards for blood donation but are more likely to favour non-monetary ones. This is consistent with the idea that while monetary rewards may crowd out blood donation, non-monetary rewards do not.

Item Type: Monograph (Discussion Paper)
Official URL: http://cep.lse.ac.uk
Additional Information: © 2012 The Authors
Divisions: European Institute
Social Policy
Centre for Economic Performance
Health Policy
Subjects: H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
JEL classification: I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I1 - Health > I18 - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I3 - Welfare and Poverty > I38 - Government Policy; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
Z - Other Special Topics > Z1 - Cultural Economics; Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology > Z13 - Social Norms and Social Capital; Social Networks
Date Deposited: 13 Dec 2012 12:20
Last Modified: 15 Sep 2023 23:27
URI: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/47679

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