The Psychology of Blood Donation: Current Research and Future Directions

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tmrv.2008.02.005Get rights and content

With an ever-increasing demand on blood supplies worldwide, there is an immense need to ensure a safe and sufficient supply of blood products. However, recruiting and retaining blood donors remain key challenges for blood agencies. In an attempt to address these problems, researchers have identified a range of sociodemographic, organizational, physiological, and psychological factors that influence people's willingness to donate blood. Although past research has largely focused on donor recruitment, in particular, demographic variables associated with blood donation behavior, the issue of donor retention has become increasingly important. A growing number of studies have also highlighted the role of psychological factors in explaining, predicting, and promoting blood donation behavior. In line with recent trends in blood donation research, the present article reviews the contributions of, and current directions in, psychological research on blood donation attitudes and behavior, with special emphasis on donor return and repeat blood donation behavior. Although there is overlap between factors that predict the initiation and the maintenance of blood donation behavior, it is suggested that changes in motivation and the development of self-identity as a blood donor are crucial for understanding the processes whereby first-time donors become repeat donors.

Section snippets

Theoretical Focus

Although the need for a better understanding of blood donor behavior has been noted to be of key importance for blood collection agencies internationally,24 much of the previous applied research on donor behavior has failed to draw clearly or systematically on contemporary theories of behavioral decision making.20 Theories in applied contexts are necessary tools: they integrate and order existing empirical findings as well as serve to guide research by generating new predictions.25 To that end,

The Theory of Planned Behavior

Building on the TRA of Fishbein and Ajzen,27 the TPB18 (Fig 1) is a well-known behavioral decision-making model designed to account for behaviors that are not under an individual's complete volitional control. The TPB is based on the premise that intention is the most proximal determinant of behavior. Intention, in turn, is proposed to be influenced by attitude (positive or negative evaluations of performing the behavior), subjective norm (perceptions of social pressure for performance of the

Static Psychology and the Challenge of the Psychology of Repeat Blood Donation

As Ferguson et al7, 9, 12 have noted, the TPB18 has been one of the most enduring theories in predicting blood donation intentions and behavior. To that end, it is perhaps surprising that we still know very little about how the transitions from first-time donor to early career donor and then to established donor take place. As Callero and Piliavin22(p 3) observed 25 years ago, “there has been no effort to study commitment as a gradual developmental process whereby first-time donors become

The Issue of Control

Implicit in the discussion of the shift from initiation to maintenance of blood donation has been the notion of perceived control and the influence that this, and its underpinning constructs, have on the behavior of blood donation. Within the recent blood donor research literature, there has been an increasingly explicit recognition of the significant and prohibitive influence that control factors appear to exert on (would-be) blood donors' intentions and behavior.26, 43 This recognition has

The Psychology of the Repeat Blood Donor—Some Concluding Remarks

In this review, we have explicitly sought to examine the psychology of repeat blood donation, that is, to consider the myriad of influences that act on some people to make them “life's best gift givers.” Noting the dominance of Ajzen's18 TPB in this field,7, 8, 12, 26 we have systematically examined the efficacy of the basic model and proposed revisions to that model, in terms of moral norm, anticipated regret, past behavior/habit, and self-identity or role identity, in accounting for the

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge the Australian Research Council (LP5601113) and Australian Red Cross Blood Services for funding this research. We would like to thank Sally Lai, Natalie Robinson, and Sharon Dane for their assistance with earlier drafts of this review.

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