Encouraging Bone Marrow Donation Through Values Affirmation: A Field Experiment

Authors:

Abstract: The National Marrow Donor Registry faces a pressing challenge, shared by many charitable and social organizations: how might people be encouraged to give to those in need? The decision to donate bone marrow can be seen as the culmination of a series of decisions, with an affirmative response to each similar to the act of ascending the next rung on a ladder. In a large-scale field experiment with a donor recruitment organization, we find that a values-affirmation intervention at the first decision point (registration) fostered higher commitment for the process of donating bone marrow, months and even years later. For a random half of people who registered at a bone marrow drive throughout the country (N=321,678), we altered the registration form to include a prompt asking respondents to indicate the values that led them to register. Completing this prompt was associated with higher levels of commitment through the multi-stage donation process, with some evidence that it increased the number of registrants who became full-fledged bone-marrow donors, potentially saving lives. The role of self-identity in the maintenance of commitment through ladder-like decision processes is discussed.

Track: MORAL

Keywords: affirmation, identity, values, commitment, pro-social behavior, organ donation