Blood donor show behaviour after an invitation to donate: The influence of collection site factors

How public trust and healthcare quality relate to blood donation behavior: Cross-cultural evidence

Blood donors are indispensable for enabling a myriad of medical procedures and treatments. We examined how public trust in the healthcare system and healthcare quality relate to individuals' likelihood of donating blood, using survey data from representative samples of 28 European countries (N = 27,868). Our preregistered analyses revealed that country-level public trust, but not healthcare quality, predicted individual propensity to donate blood. Notably, public trust decreased over time in many countries, while healthcare quality increased. Our results highlight the role of subjective perceptions of the healthcare system, rather than the objective state of healthcare, for blood donation behavior in Europe.

Did you donate? Talking about donations predicts compliance with solicitations for donations

Many forms of prosocial behaviour are highly institutionalized. They are facilitated by organizations that broker between donors and recipients. A highly effective tool that organizations use to elicit prosocial behaviour are solicitations for donations (e.g., of blood, time, or money). Using register and survey data on blood donations in the Netherlands, we examine to what extent compliance with these solicitations is predicted by being recruited via word of mouth (WOM) and talking about donations. Our model predicts that donors that are one unit higher on our measure of talking about donations (range = 1-4) have a 2.9 percentage points higher compliance with solicitations for donations. In addition, this association is stronger for novice donors. Our study demonstrates the social embedding of the donors' decision-making processes about compliance. For practice, our results imply that organizations may increase their contributors' communication about donations to increase the effectiveness of their solicitations.

Motivation, blood donor satisfaction and intention to return during the COVID-19 pandemic

Background and Objectives

This study aimed to describe motives as well as donation experiences and the intention to return for further donations of German whole blood donors who donated at the beginning of the COVID‐19 pandemic.

Materials and Methods

To describe motives and donor experiences, a retrospective survey was conducted among whole blood donors that had a donation appointment at the German Red Cross Blood Donation Service in the first 4 weeks of the pandemic. A donor questionnaire including 17 retrospective questions was sent to 7500 donors. Donor motivation and donor experiences were compared for different donor groups using chi‐square statistics. Finally, in an ordinal logistic regression model predictors for the intention to return were identified.

Results

More than half of the participating donors (56.9%) wanted to contribute to the fight against the pandemic by donating blood. Most of the donors were satisfied with their last donation experience and felt safe during the blood donor appointment. However, some donors would have liked more information on how to deal with the pandemic (20.3%). Intention to return for further donations was strongly associated with overall satisfaction (OR: 1.67, CI: 1.47–1.90) and the feeling of being safe during blood donation (OR: 1.33, CI: 1.05–1.68).

Conclusion

Donor satisfaction with the last donation was high and the vast majority of donors felt very safe. However, those donors who felt unsafe expressed a low intention to return and blood donation services should therefore carefully monitor donor satisfaction.

Beyond Description: The Predictive Role of Affect, Memory, and Context in the Decision to Donate or Not Donate Blood

Background

Research on the recruitment and retention of blood donors has typically drawn on a homogeneous set of descriptive theories, viewing the decision to become and remain a donor as the outcome of affectively cold, planned, and rational decision-making by the individual. While this approach provides insight into how our donors think about blood donation, it is limited and has not translated into a suite of effective interventions. In this review, we set out to explore how 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.

Summary

Drawing on emerging research, we argue for the importance of considering the implications of both the positive and the negative emotions that donors experience and we argue for the importance of directly targeting affect in interventions to recruit nondonors. Next, we focus on the reconstructed nature of memory and the factors that influence what we remember about an event. We discuss how these processes may impact the retention of donors and the potential to intervene to enhance donors' recollections of their experiences. Finally, we discuss how our focus on the individual has led us to neglect the influence of the context in which donation takes place on donor behavior. We argue that the amassing of comprehensive large data sets detailing both the characteristics of the individuals and the context of their giving will ultimately allow for the more effective deployment of resources to improve recruitment and retention.

Key Messages

In suggesting these directions for future research, our want is to move beyond the ways in which we have traditionally described blood donation behavior with the aim of improving our theorizing about donors while improving the translational value of our research.

Psychosocial characteristics of blood donors influence their voluntary nonmedical lapse

BACKGROUND

Approximately 10% of Dutch donors lapse yearly. Common reasons are nonvoluntary medical issues (e.g., low hemoglobin), reaching the upper age limit, and voluntary (e.g., own request, nonresponse). Little is known about predictors of voluntary noncompliance (lapses). Psychosocial characteristics have been linked to various health behaviors, including voluntary noncompliance. Hence, we investigated whether psychosocial characteristics, measured before the first donation, similarly predict subsequent voluntary nonmedical lapse.

STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS

New donors (n = 4861) randomly received a blood donation survey between July 2008 and March 2009, before their first appointment at the blood bank. Voluntary lapses included personal reasons, nonresponse to invitations, donor who could not be reached, and no show. Univariate and multivariate Cox regression models of lapse on psychosocial characteristics and confounders (e.g., demographics) were estimated.

RESULTS

Of 2964 donors who took the questionnaire, more than one-third (36.5%) had voluntarily lapsed due to nonmedical reasons by 2016. Univariate regression showed that lapse negatively associated with norms, attitudes, and intentions toward blood donation; self-efficacy; and more donation experience. Lapse positively associated with anxiety. Multivariate Cox models showed that lapse was primarily driven by anxiety and need for information.

CONCLUSION

Certain psychosocial characteristics increase risks of voluntary lapse. Especially donors with higher donation anxiety had increased lapsing risks. They might benefit from extra attention during donation. Donors with more information need or wish about procedure and patients were less likely to lapse, indicating that binding with the blood bank might prevent lapse. Generally, this study showed that donor lapse and donor return are determined by different psychosocial factors not just the reverse of each other.