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Do all material incentives for pro-social activities backfire? The response to cash and non-cash incentives for blood donations

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  • Lacetera, Nicola
  • Macis, Mario

Abstract

A number of experimental studies have documented that financial rewards discourage the performance of altruistic activities because they conflict with intrinsic altruistic motivations. However, it is unclear whether this is evidence of a generalized aversion to rewards or, rather, an aversion to receiving specific material prizes, such as cash. We conducted a randomized-controlled experiment, through a survey administered to 467 blood donors in an Italian town, and found that donors are not reluctant to receive compensation in general; a substantial share of respondents declared that they would stop being donors if given 10 Euros in cash, but we do not find such effects when a voucher of the same nominal value is offered instead. The aversion to direct cash payments is particularly marked among women, but does not emerge among individuals who have only recently become donors. All of our findings are robust to regression analyses. Implications for research and public policy are discussed.

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Bibliographic Info

Article provided by Elsevier in its journal Journal of Economic Psychology.

Volume (Year): 31 (2010)
Issue (Month): 4 (August)
Pages: 738-748

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Handle: RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:31:y:2010:i:4:p:738-748

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Web page: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/joep

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Keywords: Altruism Public health Motivation and emotion;

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References

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  1. James Andreoni & Lise Vesterlund, 2001. "Which Is The Fair Sex? Gender Differences In Altruism," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 116(1), pages 293-312, February.
  2. Gary S. Becker & Julio Jorge El�as, 2007. "Introducing Incentives in the Market for Live and Cadaveric Organ Donations," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(3), pages 3-24, Summer.
  3. Carl Mellström & Magnus Johannesson, 2008. "Crowding Out in Blood Donation: Was Titmuss Right?," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 6(4), pages 845-863, 06.
  4. Lorenz Goette & Alois Stutzer, 2008. "Blood donations and incentives: evidence from a field experiment," Working Papers 08-3, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
  5. Roland Benabou & Jean Tirole, 2003. "Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation," Review of Economic Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 70(3), pages 489-520, 07.
  6. Ariely, Dan & Bracha, Anat & Meier, Stephan, 2007. "Doing Good or Doing Well? Image Motivation and Monetary Incentives in Behaving Prosocially," IZA Discussion Papers 2968, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  7. Piper, Greg & Schnepf, Sylke V., 2007. "Gender Differences in Charitable Giving," IZA Discussion Papers 3242, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  8. Armin Falk, 2007. "Gift Exchange in the Field," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 75(5), pages 1501-1511, 09.
  9. Sebastian Kube & Michel Andre Marechal & Clemens Puppe, 2012. "The Currency of Reciprocity: Gift Exchange in the Workplace," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(4), pages 1644-62, June.
  10. Waldfogel, Joel, 1993. "The Deadweight Loss of Christmas," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(5), pages 1328-36, December.
  11. Lacetera, Nicola & Macis, Mario, 2008. "Motivating Altruism: A Field Study," IZA Discussion Papers 3770, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  12. Fisher, Robert J, 1993. " Social Desirability Bias and the Validity of Indirect Questioning," Journal of Consumer Research, University of Chicago Press, vol. 20(2), pages 303-15, September.
  13. Susanne Neckermann & Bruno S. Frey, 2008. "Awards as Incentives," CREMA Working Paper Series 2008-31, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
  14. Rachel Croson & Uri Gneezy, 2009. "Gender Differences in Preferences," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 448-74, June.
  15. Lacetera, Nicola & Macis, Mario, 2008. "Social Image Concerns and Pro-Social Behavior," IZA Discussion Papers 3771, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
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Citations

Blog mentions

As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
  1. Hide The Blood Money
    by Robin Hanson in Overcoming Bias on 2009-10-25 03:00:47
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
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Cited by:
  1. Nicola Lacetera & Mario Macis & Robert Slonim, 2011. "Rewarding Altruism? A Natural Field Experiment," NBER Working Papers 17636, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  2. Jingnan (Cecilia) Chen & Daniel Houser, 2013. "Promises and Lies: An Experiment on Detecting Deception," Working Papers 1038, George Mason University, Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science, revised Feb 2013.
  3. Joan Costa Font & Mireia Jofre-Bonet & Steven T. Yen, 2012. "Not all Incentives Wash out the Warm Glow: The Case of Blood Donation Revisited," CEP Discussion Papers dp1157, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
  4. Lan Shi, 2011. "Monetary Rewards, Image Concern, and Intrinsic Motivation: Evidence from a Survey on Blood Donation," Working Papers UWEC-2010-07-R, University of Washington, Department of Economics, revised Feb 2011.
  5. Xiaofei (Sophia) Pan & Daniel Houser, 2011. "Social Approval, Competition and Cooperation," Working Papers 1028, George Mason University, Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science.
  6. Hammermann, Andrea & Mohnen, Alwine, 2012. "Who Benefits from Benefits? Empirical Research on Tangible Incentives," IZA Discussion Papers 6284, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).

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