IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/eujhec/v15y2014i3p313-321.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Blood donation as a public good: an empirical investigation of the free rider problem

Author

Listed:
  • Ignacio Abásolo
  • Aki Tsuchiya

Abstract

A voluntary blood donation system can be seen as a public good. People can take advantage without contributing and have a free ride. We empirically analyse the extent of free riding and its determinants. Interviews of the general public in Spain (n = 1,211) were used to ask whether respondents were (or have been) regular blood donors and, if not, the reason. Free riders are defined as those who are medically capable to donate blood but do not. In addition, we distinguish four different types of free riding depending on the reason given for not donating. Binomial and multinomial logit models estimate the effect of individual characteristics on the propensity to free ride and the likelihood of the free rider types. Amongst those who are able to donate, there is a 67 % probability of being a free rider. The most likely free rider is female, single, with low/no education and abstained from voting in a recent national election. Gender, age, religious practice, political participation and regional income explain the type of free rider. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014

Suggested Citation

  • Ignacio Abásolo & Aki Tsuchiya, 2014. "Blood donation as a public good: an empirical investigation of the free rider problem," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 15(3), pages 313-321, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:eujhec:v:15:y:2014:i:3:p:313-321
    DOI: 10.1007/s10198-013-0496-x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10198-013-0496-x
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10198-013-0496-x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Brubaker, Earl R, 1975. "Free Ride, Free Revelation, or Golden Rule?," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 18(1), pages 147-161, April.
    2. Mark Isaac, R. & McCue, Kenneth F. & Plott, Charles R., 1985. "Public goods provision in an experimental environment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 51-74, February.
    3. Andreoni, James, 1995. "Cooperation in Public-Goods Experiments: Kindness or Confusion?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(4), pages 891-904, September.
    4. Wildman, John & Hollingsworth, Bruce, 2009. "Blood donation and the nature of altruism," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 492-503, March.
    5. Unger, Lynette S., 1991. "Altruism as a motivation to volunteer," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 71-100, March.
    6. R. Isaac & James Walker & Susan Thomas, 1984. "Divergent evidence on free riding: An experimental examination of possible explanations," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 43(2), pages 113-149, January.
    7. Lipford, Jody W, 1995. "Group Size and the Free-Rider Hypothesis: An Examination of New Evidence from Churches," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 83(3-4), pages 291-303, June.
    8. Andreoni, James, 1988. "Why free ride? : Strategies and learning in public goods experiments," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 291-304, December.
    9. Haan, Marco & Kooreman, Peter, 2002. "Free riding and the provision of candy bars," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(2), pages 277-291, February.
    10. Chliaoutakis, Joannes & Trakas, Deanna J. & Socrataki, Fotini & Lemonidou, Chrysoula & Papaioannou, Dimitris, 1994. "Blood donor behaviour in Greece: Implications for health policy," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 38(10), pages 1461-1467, May.
    11. Brunner, Eric J, 1998. "Free Riders or Easy Riders?: An Examination of the Voluntary Provision of Public Radio," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 97(4), pages 587-604, December.
    12. Bagnoli, Mark & McKee, Michael, 1991. "Voluntary Contribution Games: Efficient Private Provision of Public Goods," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 29(2), pages 351-366, April.
    13. Oliver Kim & Mark Walker, 1984. "The free rider problem: Experimental evidence," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 43(1), pages 3-24, January.
    14. Eckel, Catherine C. & Grossman, Philip J. & Johnston, Rachel M., 2005. "An experimental test of the crowding out hypothesis," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(8), pages 1543-1560, August.
    15. Andreoni, James, 1990. "Impure Altruism and Donations to Public Goods: A Theory of Warm-Glow Giving?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 100(401), pages 464-477, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wong, Alfred & Wei, Lu & Yang, Jie & Tjosvold, Dean, 2017. "Productivity and participation values for cooperative goals to limit free riding and promote performance in international joint ventures," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 52(6), pages 819-830.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ignacio Abásolo & Aki Tsuchiya, 2012. "Blood Donation as a Public Good: An Empirical Investigation of the Free-Rider," Working Papers 2012004, The University of Sheffield, Department of Economics.
    2. Ananish Chaudhuri, 2011. "Sustaining cooperation in laboratory public goods experiments: a selective survey of the literature," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 14(1), pages 47-83, March.
    3. Boosey, Luke A., 2017. "Conditional cooperation in network public goods experiments," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 108-116.
    4. Masel, Joanna, 2007. "A Bayesian model of quasi-magical thinking can explain observed cooperation in the public good game," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 216-231, October.
    5. Ledyard, John O., "undated". "Public Goods: A Survey of Experimental Research," Working Papers 861, California Institute of Technology, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences.
    6. Chaudhuri, Ananish & Maitra, Pushkar & Graziano, Sara, 2003. "A Dynamic Analysis of the Evolution of Conventions in a Public Goods Experiment with Intergenerational Advice," Working Papers 152, Department of Economics, The University of Auckland.
    7. Jasmina Arifovic & John Ledyard, 2012. "Individual Evolutionary Learning, Other-regarding Preferences, and the Voluntary Contributions Mechanism," Discussion Papers wp12-01, Department of Economics, Simon Fraser University.
    8. Arifovic, Jasmina & Ledyard, John, 2012. "Individual evolutionary learning, other-regarding preferences, and the voluntary contributions mechanism," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(9-10), pages 808-823.
    9. Kurt A. Ackermann & Ryan O. Murphy, 2019. "Explaining Cooperative Behavior in Public Goods Games: How Preferences and Beliefs Affect Contribution Levels," Games, MDPI, vol. 10(1), pages 1-34, March.
    10. Burlando, Roberto & Hey, John D., 1997. "Do Anglo-Saxons free-ride more?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 41-60, April.
    11. Brandts, Jordi & Schram, Arthur, 2001. "Cooperation and noise in public goods experiments: applying the contribution function approach," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(2), pages 399-427, February.
    12. Fangfang Tan, 2008. "Punishment in a Linear Public Good Game with Productivity Heterogeneity," De Economist, Springer, vol. 156(3), pages 269-293, September.
    13. James C. Cox & Vjollca Sadiraj, 2007. "On Modeling Voluntary Contributions to Public Goods," Public Finance Review, , vol. 35(2), pages 311-332, March.
    14. Bodo Sturm & Joachim Weimann, 2006. "Experiments in Environmental Economics and Some Close Relatives," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(3), pages 419-457, July.
    15. Soetevent, Adriaan R., 2003. "Anonymity in giving in a natural context : an economic field experiment in thirty churches," CCSO Working Papers 200308, University of Groningen, CCSO Centre for Economic Research.
    16. Thomas Gaube, 2005. "Altruism and charitable giving in a fully replicated economy," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2005_8, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    17. Buckley, Edward & Croson, Rachel, 2006. "Income and wealth heterogeneity in the voluntary provision of linear public goods," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(4-5), pages 935-955, May.
    18. Asano, Masanari & Basieva, Irina & Khrennikov, Andrei & Ohya, Masanori & Tanaka, Yoshiharu, 2012. "Quantum-like dynamics of decision-making," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 391(5), pages 2083-2099.
    19. Alexis Belianin & Marco Novarese, 2005. "Trust, communication and equlibrium behaviour in public goods," Experimental 0506001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Urs Fischbacher & Simon G�chter, 2005. "Heterogeneous social preferences and the dynamics of free riding in public goods," IEW - Working Papers 261, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Free rider; Blood donation; Public good; Non-donation; H41 (public goods); D64 (altruism); D62 (externalities);
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods
    • D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers
    • D62 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Externalities

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:eujhec:v:15:y:2014:i:3:p:313-321. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.