Study evaluates increase in blood donations caused by transport fare discount

The need to encourage more people to donate blood more often is clear and urgent, as blood supply is often insufficient to meet medical care demands around the world. Understanding how to effectively expand this altruistic behavior is critical to the smooth functioning of health systems.

One frequently mentioned barrier to blood donation is transportation cost and time. To examine the effectiveness of an initiative to reduce this barrier, Lucia Barros, a researcher at FGV EAESP, together with researchers at FGV EBAPE and Imperial College London, carried out a study, whose findings were published in Social Science and Medicine. The study analyzed a one-day campaign in which people were offered a discount on ride-hailing app fares to promote blood donation and looked at its long-term effects.

In 2018, the Rio de Janeiro State Blood Center ran this one-day campaign in partnership with a ridesharing company, offering a discount for trips to and/or from the blood center. The researchers looked at a period of 195 days and almost 24,000 donors, using logistic regression and proportional hazard models to assess the campaign’s influence and rate of return.

The results showed a significant increase in donation attempts on the day of the campaign, with 590 attempts and 438 actual donations. There was a notable increase in the number of first-time donors and the initiative attracted more individuals who fit the profile of the ridesharing company’s customers. The incentive reduced people’s costs in terms of money, time and effort, thereby reducing the inconvenience associated with donating blood.

The waiting time at the blood center was considerably longer on the day of the campaign, although this did not reduce the quality of the blood collected. The intervention resulted in a 97.4% increase in donations on the day of the campaign and the donors in question had a predicted return rate of 36.2%.

Although the incentive substantially increased donors’ attendance on the day of the intervention, it also led to a lower future return rate. This can be explained by the increase in waiting time, which negatively affected the donors’ experience. Despite this, the short-term growth in the number of donations during the intervention offset the reduction in return rate, validating the campaign’s effectiveness.

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