Simple Reciprocal Fairness Message to Enhance Non-Donor's Willingness to Donate Blood

Against a background of declining blood donor numbers, recruiting new donors is critical for the effective operations of healthcare providers. Thus, interventions are needed to recruit new blood donors.

We provide initial evidence for Voluntary Reciprocal Altruism (VRA) to enhance nondonors' willingness to become blood donors. VRA interventions involve asking two questions: one on accepting a blood transfusion if needed and one on willingness to donate. As early trials often use self-reports of willingness to perform blood donation behavior, we derive a correction factor to better estimate actual behavior. Finally, we explore the effect of VRA interventions on two prosocial emotions: gratitude and guilt.

Across three experiments (two in the UK and one in Australia: Total N = 1,208 nondonors) we manipulate VRA messages and explore how they affect both reported willingness to make a one-off or repeat blood donation and influence click through to blood donation, organ donation and volunteering registration sites (behavioral proxies). We report data from a longitudinal cohort (N = 809) that enables us to derive a correction for self-reported behavioral willingness.

Across the three experiments, we show that exposure to a question that asks about accepting a transfusion if needed increased willingness to donate blood with some spillover to organ donor registration. We also show that gratitude has an independent effect on donation and report a behavioral correction factor of .10.

Asking nondonors about accepting a transfusion if needed is likely to be an effective strategy to increase new donor numbers.