Who gives life? Understanding, explaining and predicting donor behaviour

Project Information

DONORS

Grant agreement ID: 802227

DOI

10.3030/802227

Project closed

EC signature date 14 January 2019

Start date 1 February 2019

End date 31 July 2024

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 252 720,00

EU contribution

€ 1 252 720,00

Coordinated by

STICHTING VU
Netherlands

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - DONORS (Who gives life? Understanding, explaining and predicting donor behaviour)

Reporting period: 2023-08-01 to 2024-07-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Without prosocial individuals, no money would be donated to charity, no volunteer work performed. Without blood donors, no blood products would be available for patient treatment. Four million patients are annually treated with blood products in Europe, given by voluntary donors. However, as little as 2-3% of the population in Europe is active as donor with decreasing numbers. At the same time, the demand for blood products and other substances of human origin (e.g. organs) is increasing, in times of demographic change. Hence, it is crucial that a country’s donor pools are sufficient to ensure access to all needed products. A thorough investigation of donor motives, as well as a dynamic approach to donor life courses is lacking. Yet, this information is fundamental to develop effective evidence-based donor management. Explaining (sustained) prosocial behaviour in humans requires innovative, multidisciplinary and dynamic approaches because we still do not fully understand why prosociality survives. The DONORS project has produced results relevant for both science and society to enhance knowledge about prosocial behaviour, and ultimately recruitment and retention of human substance donors, cornerstones of health care. Until now donor management is hardly, if at all evidence-based. Hence, besides through scientific publications and conference presentations, our results were disseminated throigh professional publications, social media posts and blogs, and public outreach events to summarise key outcomes of DONORS that relevant to policymaking.

Main aim of DONORS: Propose and test a life course model of prosociality, including (changes in) individual determinants, network characteristics and societal contexts to understand and predict donor motivations and behaviour.

This main aim is broken down in the following objectives:
• First, examine which individual and social network characteristics determine donor motivations and behaviour over the life course (WP1)
• Second, study to what extent and which genes contribute to explaining variation in prosociality and donor behaviour (WP2)
• Third, explain variation in individual donor behaviour across societal contexts (WP3)

Along the main aim and objectives, we have achieved the following. We contributed to development of theories on prosocial behaviour and altruism and tested our model in several empirical studies, using different observational, survey, registry and experimental (longitudinal) data. Together, this has contributed to innovating the study of blood, plasma, and organ donation by applying an integrated theoretical life-course framework, grounded in social and behavioral sciences to unravel how individual agency, relations within social networks and across life-stages, and socio-cultural context impact donation. This has resulted in a well-recognized multilevel model and shifted the dominant cross-sectional perspective on donation behavior to a dynamic one including attention to ethical considerations around blood and organ donation.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

This project has generated various types of output, including over 20 articles in international peer-reviewed journals, several open access data sets, two dissertations, numerous conference presentations and many different outreach activities, some of which are described in more detail below.

I have always been passionate about outreach and societal impact. During this project, I became even more intrigued by the importance of outreach and the relevance of research results for societal impact in the field of blood donation and transfusion, and cell and organ donation and transplantation. I regularly lecture for the Abbott Transfusion Health Institute, a non-profit platform to educate professionals in low-income countries on blood donation and transfusion and present, among others, the results of this project. I am a recognized expert for policymakers in blood donation and transfusion such as at the Finnish, Australian, Belgium Red Cross, and Turkish Red Crescent. They have all reached out to me during the project period to present ongoing work and key results. I contributed to the development and accreditation of the Dutch medical specialism profile Donor Health Care as expert in a Delphi consultation (2022) by adding a social science perspective. I developed a well-received exhibition in Science Museum Boerhaave (2023) in Leiden, the Netherlands about blood donation, using donor and patient stories to create awareness about donating. After having been exhibited in Science Museum Boerhaave, the installations were moved to the Dutch Ministry of Health in order to inform health professionals about the backgrounds of plasma (medicines) and the importance of plasma donation. This was further developed into a serious game for children, tested in NEMO Science Museum Amsterdam and now available on Play Store. A follow-up is supported by an ERC-Proof-of-Concept Grants (2023). Based on the scientific results of the DONORS project, we also organized a community based pop-up exhibition in Amsterdam to inform potential donors about blood and stem cell donation and the importance of a diverse donor pool to serve a diverse patient populations. This exhibit consisted of several paintings that were commissioned, based on short stories, that our research team developed around the main scientific conclusions of DONORS. The paintings were presented during speak sessions, which included all stakeholders, ranging from artists, to patients and donors, to policy-makers, clinicians and blood bank professionals.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Based on our initial theoretical model, our key publication Masser et al. (2020) and other output, I argue that research on the behaviour of blood and organ donors has typically drawn on a homogeneous set of descriptive theories, viewing the decision to become and remain a donor as outcome of affectively cold, planned, and rational decision-making by the individual. While this approach provides insight into how our donors think about donation, it is limited, has only partially enhanced our understanding of prosocial behaviour and has not translated into a suite of effective policies and interventions. A broader consideration of the influences on donor decision-making, in terms of affect, memory, and the context in which donation takes place, may yield benefit in the way we approach donor recruitment and retention. By drawing on emerging research, the field now argues for the importance of considering the implications of both the positive and the negative emotions that donors experience and the importance of directly targeting affect in interventions to recruit nondonors. Finally, we have discussed how the focus on the individual has led us to neglect the influence of the context in which donation takes place on donor behavior. We show that the amassing of comprehensive large data sets detailing both the characteristics of the individuals and the context of their giving (such as the Eurobarometer or European Value Survey, extensively used in this project) will ultimately allow for the more effective deployment of resources to improve theory and understanding but also recruitment and retention of donors. In suggesting such directions for future research, our want is to move beyond the ways in which we have traditionally described donation behavior, with the aim of improving our theorizing about donors while simultaneously improving the translational value of our research.

Logo of the DONORS project