Blood donation and the nature of altruism.

Wildman, John and Hollingsworth, Bruce (2009) Blood donation and the nature of altruism. Journal of Health Economics, 28 (2). pp. 492-503. ISSN 0167-6296

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Abstract

Approximately 10% of people have O-negative blood. Because it can be transfused into almost anyone, hospitals particularly value such blood. We use this fact, together with the assumption that blood types are exogenously assigned by nature, to design an empirical inquiry into altruism. We also investigate the timing of donations, especially focussing on the behaviour of new and established donors. We show that O-negative blood donors donate no more often than other people. Thus individuals apparently do not exhibit pure altruism. We speculate that instead blood donors may be driven by a broad notion of duty rather than by a far-sighted, rational unselfishness.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Journal of Health Economics
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/core/keywords/medicalresearch/healthinformationcomputationandstatistics
Subjects:
?? blood donationcharity public good altruism latent variablehealth information, computation and statisticspublic health, environmental and occupational healthhealth policyr medicine (general) ??
ID Code:
55170
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
19 Jun 2012 08:35
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
15 Jul 2024 12:54