Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP10345
Authors: Adrian Bruhin; Lorenz Goette; Simon Haenni; Lingqing Jiang
Abstract: Spillovers of prosocial motivation are crucial for the formation of social capital. They facilitate interactions among individuals and create social multipliers that amplify the effects of policy interventions. We conducted a large-scale intervention study among dyads of blood donors to investigate whether social ties lead to motivational spillovers in the decision to donate. The intervention is a randomized phone call making donors aware of a current shortage of their blood type and serving us as an instrument for identifying motivational spillovers. About 40% of a donor's motivation spills over to the other donor, creating a significant social multiplier of 1.78.
Keywords: bivariate probit; blood donation; prosocial motivation; social interactions
JEL Codes: C31; C36; D03
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Motivation of donor receiving call (D64) | Motivation of fellow tenant (R21) |
| Motivation of fellow tenant (R21) | Donor's motivation to give blood (D64) |
| Motivation of fellow tenant (R21) | Overall donation rates (D64) |
| Motivation of fellow tenant characteristics (R21) | Donation decisions (D64) |
| Phone call intervention (L96) | Motivation of donor receiving call (D64) |
| Phone call intervention (L96) | Probability of donation for those called (D64) |