TY - JOUR
T1 - Do all material incentives for pro-social activities backfire? The response to cash and non-cash incentives for blood donations
AU - Lacetera, Nicola
AU - Macis, Mario
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank the Editor, Daniel Read, and two anonymous referees as well as Antonio Lacetera, Nina Mazar and James Rebitzer for useful comments. We are grateful to the President and Board members of The Town’s unit of the Italian Association of Blood Donors (Associazione Volontari Italiani del Sangue, AVIS), and to the head and staff of the Transfusion Unit in The Town’s hospital for their precious collaboration. Raffaella Manna has offered an invaluable contribution to the data collection effort; Hong Pum Chung has provided excellent research assistance, and Christina Davis has provided outstanding editorial help. Financial support from the Ross School of Business Small Grants Research Fund is gratefully acknowledged.
PY - 2010/8
Y1 - 2010/8
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - Altruism
KW - Motivation and emotion
KW - Public health
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U2 - 10.1016/j.joep.2010.05.007
DO - 10.1016/j.joep.2010.05.007
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:77955050530
SN - 0167-4870
VL - 31
SP - 738
EP - 748
JO - Journal of Economic Psychology
JF - Journal of Economic Psychology
IS - 4
ER -