Matching-Gift Incentives and Blood Donation: Linking Local and Global Altruism

In Memoriam: Gary Charness passed away before the completion of this paper. Gary was an outstanding and highly influential scholar, a great collaborator, and a kind, generous person. We are grateful for his wisdom, mentorship, and friendship. His dedication to research and education has inspired all those who had the privilege to work alongside him. As we present this work, we honor his memory and extend our tribute to his legacy. We are grateful for the valuable feedback and suggestions received during presentations of earlier versions of this paper at seminars and workshops held in Helsinki, Amsterdam, Tucson, Doha, Sevilla, Granada, and Mallorca. This research was funded by Regional Government of Andalusia through project P20-00029; and the grants PID2022-137457NB-I00 and TED2021–132515B-I00 funded by MICIU/AEI /10.13039/501100011033 and by ERDF, EU and the European Union Next Generation EU/PRTR, respectively. This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the University of Granada (Spain), reference number 140/CEIH/2023. We gratefully acknowledge Lola López Candia from the Regional Blood Transfusion Center in Granada (Spain), whose efficiency and the center’s collaboration were indispensable to this project. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Author contributions: GC: formulated hypotheses, designed empirical analysis. RCR, JAL, FL, MRM: designed and conducted the field experiment, formulated hypotheses, designed empirical analysis, interpreted results, wrote manuscript. JMB: designed and conducted the field experiment, prepared the de-identified data set, formulated hypotheses, designed empirical analysis, interpreted results, wrote manuscript. NL, MM: formulated hypotheses, designed empirical analysis, performed statistical analysis of de-identified data, interpreted results, wrote manuscript.