Symbolic incentives can affect the frequency of blood and plasma donations: Evidence from 12 years of donors’ behavior and donation awards

Resumen

We use panel data (from 2008 to 2019) covering the entire population of blood and plasma donors affiliated to an association of donors (AVIS) in an Italian region (Tuscany) to examine how donors respond to a nonlinear scheme of symbolic incentives (medals) related to donation quotas and length of membership. The structure of the award scheme allows us to study the impact of two distinct characteristics of the symbolic awards: the private vs. public assignment, and the donation-only vs. donation-and-membership criterion (although this latter characteristic can only be distinguished for private assignments). When we control for unobservable individual characteristics potentially affecting the evolution of performance along a donor’s career we find that: (i) public assignment of medals has an impact which is not appreciably different from the one with private assignment, (ii) the donation-and-membership criterion induces an ex-post increase in the frequency of donations, while the donation-only criterion does not. This evidence suggests that symbolic awards are useful if given to less performing donors, that they affect behavior after their obtainment rather than before, and that they operate when their obtainment does not exclusively depend on performance, but also on membership.

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Cómo citar (APA 7)

Bilancini, E., Boncinelli, L., Di Paolo, R., Menicagli, D., Ricciardi, E., & Serti, F. (2021). Symbolic incentives can affect the frequency of blood and plasma donations: Evidence from 12 years of donors’ behavior and donation awards. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/mgvtd