Abstract
Donor acquisition and retention is a major problem of blood banks throughout the world. Recently, the World Health Organisation’s Blood Safety Unit has confirmed that sufficient high-quality blood supplies should be based on non-remunerated donations by self-selected and professionally screened volunteers from the general population [2]. To institutionalise this, the WHO-BSU recommends the establishment of a blood donor unit within blood transfusion services, which is to organise and administrate the necessary procedures for the education, motivation, recruitment and retention of blood donors. For an effective functioning of blood donor units it would be crucial to understand the motivational conditions under which potential donors may consider to volunteer, will actually contact blood bank personnel, will eventually give blood for the first time, and will subsequently get into some routine of regular blood donation. One would also want to know the negative considerations for blood donation: why do healthy people, once or repeatedly, refrain from giving blood; why do they not return after their first donation; why do regular donors drop out of a long-time relationship with a blood bank? Professional training materials for blood donor units cannot be developed to the extent that basic knowledge about donor and non-donor motivation is lacking.
The reported research was conducted as a collaborative effort between the University of Groningen and the Blood Bank Noord Nederland in Groningen, NL. The authors are indebted to CTh. Sinit Sibinga and A.P.M. Los of the blood bank for their constructive comments and suggestions and the blood bank’s material help in various phases of the field study.
The senior author (CAJV) is professor of environmental psychology and behavioural decision research. The junior author (GWH) is a qualified social psychologist who carried out the reported empirical work for his master’s thesis [1].
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Vlek, C.A.J., Haasnoot, G.W. (1999). Improving Blood Donor Acquisition and Retention; A Multivariate Model for Understanding ‘Helping Behaviour’. In: Sibinga, C.T.S., Alter, H.J. (eds) Risk Management in Blood Transfusion: The Virtue of Reality. Developments in Hematology and Immunology, vol 34. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-3009-8_1
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