IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jleorg/v29y2013i6p1384-1420.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Time for Blood: The Effect of Paid Leave Legislation on Altruistic Behavior

Author

Listed:
  • Nicola Lacetera
  • Mario Macis

Abstract

Organizations and public agencies that promote pro-social activities constantly struggle to attract and encourage more contributions. In this article, we study the effects of an explicit reward in the context of blood donation. Specifically, we analyze the effects of a legislative provision that grants a one-day paid leave of absence to blood donors who are employees in Italy, using a unique data set with the complete donation histories of the blood donors in an Italian town. The across-donor variation in employment status, and within-donor changes over time are the sources of variation that we employ to study whether the paid-day-off incentive affects the frequency of their donations. Our analysis indicates that the day-off privilege leads donors who are employees to make, on average, one extra donation per year, which represents an increase of around 40%. We also find that the provision has persistent effects, with donors maintaining higher donation frequencies even when they cease to be eligible for the incentive. We discuss the implications of our findings for policies aimed at reducing the shortages in the supply of blood and, more generally, for organizations that try to motivate voluntary contributors. (JEL: D12, D64, I18) The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Yale University. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com, Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicola Lacetera & Mario Macis, 2013. "Time for Blood: The Effect of Paid Leave Legislation on Altruistic Behavior," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 29(6), pages 1384-1420, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jleorg:v:29:y:2013:i:6:p:1384-1420
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jleo/ews019
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

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

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Graf, Caroline & Suanet, Bianca & Wiepking, Pamala & Merz, Eva-Maria, 2023. "Social norms offer explanation for inconsistent effects of incentives on prosocial behavior," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 211(C), pages 429-441.
    2. Lacetera, Nicola & Macis, Mario & Stith, Sarah S., 2014. "Removing financial barriers to organ and bone marrow donation: The effect of leave and tax legislation in the U.S," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 43-56.
    3. Joan Costa-Font & Mireia Jofre-Bonet & Steven T. Yen, 2013. "Not All Incentives Wash Out the Warm Glow: The Case of Blood Donation Revisited," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 66(4), pages 529-551, November.
    4. Harrell, Stephen & Simons, Andrew M. & Clasen, Peter, 2022. "Promoting blood donation through social media: Evidence from Brazil, India and the USA," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 315(C).
    5. Denis Fougère & Arthur Heim, 2019. "L'évaluation socioéconomique de l'investissement social," Working Papers hal-03456048, HAL.
    6. Albanese, Giuseppe & Cioffi, Marika & Tommasino, Pietro, 2019. "Legislators' behaviour and electoral rules: Evidence from an Italian reform," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 423-444.
    7. Pham, Vinh, 2021. "Cash, Funeral Benefits or Nothing at All: How to Incentivize Family Consent for Organ Donation," MPRA Paper 111047, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Vinh Pham, 2021. "Cash, Funeral Benefits or Nothing at All: How to Incentivize Family Consent for Organ Donation," Review of Behavioral Economics, now publishers, vol. 8(2), pages 147-192, July.
    9. Iajya, Victor & Lacetera, Nicola & Macis, Mario & Slonim, Robert, 2013. "The effects of information, social and financial incentives on voluntary undirected blood donations: Evidence from a field experiment in Argentina," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 214-223.
    10. Denis Fougere & Arthur Heim, 2019. "L'évaluation socioéconomique de l'investissement social: Comment mettre en oeuvre des analyses coûts-bénéfices pour les politiques d'emploi, de santé et d'éducation," Sciences Po publications info:hdl:2441/5lge9h8e809, Sciences Po.
    11. Ackfeld, Viola & Ockenfels, Axel, 2021. "Do people intervene to make others behave prosocially?," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 58-72.
    12. Jakob Alfitian & Dirk Sliwka & Timo Vogelsang, 2021. "When Bonuses Backfire: Evidence from the Workplace," Natural Field Experiments 00725, The Field Experiments Website.
    13. Caroline Graf & Eva-Maria Merz & Bianca Suanet & Pamala Wiepking, 2021. "Social Norms Offer Explanation for Inconsistent Effects of Incentives on Prosocial Behavior," Papers 2104.13652, arXiv.org.
    14. Kurt E. Schnier & Robert M. Merion & Nicole Turgeon & David Howard, 2018. "Subsidizing Altruism In Living Organ Donation," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 56(1), pages 398-423, January.
    15. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/5lge9h8e809258uvvpjn34ekm4 is not listed on IDEAS

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health

    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:oup:jleorg:v:29:y:2013:i:6:p:1384-1420. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/jleo .

    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.