Assessment of Effective Incentives for Blood Donations. How can citizens be Motivated to donate Blood?

Demographic trends affect size and age structure of populations. Consequences will be the growth of old age groups and an increasing need of blood products for age-related diseases and treatments. This leads to the question about how to increase donation rates and how to ensure a steady supply. Only small shares of eligible populations donate on a regular basis. Donation services rely on voluntary, non-remunerated donations and thus on charitable motivation. It might be questioned whether voluntary donation will be able to guarantee sufficient future blood supply. Study aim was to find out whether a willingness to accept incentives exists and to contribute to the discussion on how to increase donation rates. A discrete choice experiment embedded in a self-administered online questionnaire was applied. Respondents were repeatedly asked to choose between two hypothetical blood donation center differing in characteristics. In case of reluctance to receiving incentives a none-option was given to opt out. Random parameter logit and latent class models were used for estimation and analysis of heterogeneous preferences. Study sample included 416 US and German college students. Results showed that choice decisions were significantly influenced by characteristics in the experiment. Respondents were more likely to choose one of the presented donation center. Incentives most preferred were monetary compensation (Coef. US/ Ger: 0.75/0.52), paid leave (0.68/0.62) and blood screening test (0.43/0.60). Short travel time to donation center (0.85/0.65) was also appealing for respondents. Latent class model identified subgroups with preference heterogeneity in samples. Small subgroups (US: N=38, Ger: N=33) indicated moderate to strong aversion to incentives. The larger part of the study sample positively responded to incentives and indicated a willingness to accept incentives for blood donation. In face of future challenges the judicious use and appropriately utilization of incentives might be an option to motivate potential donors and should be open to discussion.