Periodic Reporting for period 3 - DONORS (Who gives life? Understanding, explaining and predicting donor behaviour)
Reporting period: 2022-02-01 to 2023-07-31
Without prosocial individuals, no money would be donated to charity, no volunteer work performed. Without blood donors, no blood products would be available for 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 registered as blood donor and numbers are decreasing. 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 pool is sufficient to ensure access to needed blood products and donor organs. Targeted recruitment and retention of donors is vital to meet these demands. Many countries cope with shortages of human donor substances. 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. DONORS will provide novel scientific results on determinants and dynamics of prosocial behavior and identify clues to translating study results into evidence-based recruitment and retention strategies of blood and organ donors. Prosocial behavior often is studied in experimental settings and ample evidence about determinants of giving behavior and mechanisms behind has been generated. Yet, the question how these insights translate to real world prosocial behavior remains elusive. DONORS studies prosociality in real life, i.e. blood and organ donation, as key examples of prosocial behavior, where a stranger (patient) is helped at a donor's personal costs. DONORS will produce results for both science and society to enhance knowledge about donor 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 scientific publications, results will be disseminated by professional publications in blood banking outlets, social media posts and blogs, and a final report that summarises key outcomes of DONORS relevant to policymaking. Results from DONORS will not only give an impulse to research and theories on prosocial behaviour but can greatly improve the donor management of blood establishments and organ registries.
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)
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)
In the first months of the project, I have further developed the theoretical model of prosocial behavior, based on literature from sociology, psychology, economics and biology. In this period I recruited two PhD candidates to work on the subproject 'A life course model of donor behavior' (WP1) and 'Variation in blood donor behavior across societal contexts' (WP3). Both have been successfully admitted to the Graduate School of the VU faculty of Social Sciences. They have followed the compulsory research integrity course and are involved in revising the data management plan for DONORS. In October 2020, I hired a postdoc with a background in genetics 'Genetic explanation to variation in prosocial behaviour' (WP2). Since then, the research team is complete and the work is performed following the DoA. Several papers, preprints, popular outputs, publications and presentations have been realized. For a more detailed overview please refer to the Major Achievements and Dissemination and outputs sections in this report.
The Corona pandemic forced us, following the government measures, to work from home as much as possible and in two lockdown periods also to engage in homeschooling our children. Hence, less research output was generated than expected. After schools were reopening, the usual research activities have been taken up again. Travel and conference participation were reduced or online, personal contacts with colleagues and team members has been brought back to a minimum. Now, half way through the project, the situation is still keeping us from working at the office, traveling to conferences and building up our network. This has asked a lot of flexibility from the research team and required additional commitment. As PI of DONORS, I am incredibly happy and proud of my team that the project proceeds well, generates important results and research output, conform to the research plan.
Main results:
• Advanced theoretical models of prosocial behavior, described and outlined in more detail in the Major Achievement section and the referred pre-registrations and preprints.
• Empirical tests of these models, also described and outlined in the Major Achievement section.
• Dissemination and translation to the scientific community and other important stakeholders, including donors, policy makers, blood bank professionals, industry and the general public. For details please see the Dissemination and outputs section.
The Corona pandemic forced us, following the government measures, to work from home as much as possible and in two lockdown periods also to engage in homeschooling our children. Hence, less research output was generated than expected. After schools were reopening, the usual research activities have been taken up again. Travel and conference participation were reduced or online, personal contacts with colleagues and team members has been brought back to a minimum. Now, half way through the project, the situation is still keeping us from working at the office, traveling to conferences and building up our network. This has asked a lot of flexibility from the research team and required additional commitment. As PI of DONORS, I am incredibly happy and proud of my team that the project proceeds well, generates important results and research output, conform to the research plan.
Main results:
• Advanced theoretical models of prosocial behavior, described and outlined in more detail in the Major Achievement section and the referred pre-registrations and preprints.
• Empirical tests of these models, also described and outlined in the Major Achievement section.
• Dissemination and translation to the scientific community and other important stakeholders, including donors, policy makers, blood bank professionals, industry and the general public. For details please see the Dissemination and outputs section.
Within the main objectives several key achievements have been realized. Especially, WP3 added important new insights to both theory and evidence-based development of targeted recruitment strategies for blood and plasma donors. As often described, incentives have surprisingly inconsistent effects on donor motivation, intention and behavior. This persisting inconsistency of how incentives determine donor behavior, as again indicated in our comparative paper (cf. Publication 10), is not new. However, a thorough and structured analysis of these effects has been lacking but can provide important evidence. Our own analysis across 28 countries with harmonized instruments (i.e. the Eurobarometer survey) finds effects that point into the direction that financial incentives do not generally encourage prosocial behavior. In order to explain existing inconsistencies, we explored new theoretical directions, including the role of social norms. We showed that adding social norms to the widely established model of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation can partly explain inconsistent effects of incentives on prosocial behavior across different contexts, i.e. countries. Inclusion of social norms might have the potential to break new theoretical grounds and at the same time help collection organisations and charities to better target their recruitment and solicitation efforts based on knowledge about prevailing social norms towards incentives across demographic groups and countries.
Until the end of the project, we intend to increase our output in terms of publications for WP1-3, following the DoA, initiate a genetics consortium on prosocial behavior, consolidate existing collaborations and invest in building a professional network for the two PhD candidates and postdoc in order to stimulate their academic development and future career opportunities.
Until the end of the project, we intend to increase our output in terms of publications for WP1-3, following the DoA, initiate a genetics consortium on prosocial behavior, consolidate existing collaborations and invest in building a professional network for the two PhD candidates and postdoc in order to stimulate their academic development and future career opportunities.