Identifying blood donors willing to help with recruitment

Social influence shapes behaviour and donors are ambassadors for blood banks. Donors are role models for family and friends and, therefore, so may be able to help with donor recruitment.

A questionnaire was used to assess donors' willingness to engage in donor recruitment. Measures included willingness to recruit new donors and antecedents of recruitment motivation based on the theory of planned behaviour (TPB).

More than half of our participants were willing to try to recruit friends and family (57%). Self-efficacy was the most important correlate of intention to recruit as were cognitive attitude and experience with the blood bank. The findings suggest that the TPB provides a good basis for understanding cognitive antecedents of donors' willingness to recruit other donors.

Results suggest that using existing donors to recruit new donors could be an efficient and cost-effective way to recruit additional donors. This approach warrants further investigation.