Why do people donate blood, tissue or organs? These forms of giving behaviour have a very direct impact on the recipient, but donors also face 'costs' such as time, effort and possible medical risks. Existing research on this kind of pro-social behaviour paints a mixed picture of motivations, is scattered across different scientific disciplines and often does not take into account the influence of different socio-cultural contexts, such as laws or norms related to compensation for donations. It also rarely looks at how individuals' giving behaviour changes over time.

The DONORS group within the Center for Philanthropic Studies focuses on examining blood, tissue and organ donation, trying to take into account the knowledge gaps in the research field. The research does not look at the subject from a single scientific discipline, but focuses on the dynamics and context to encompass this behaviour as fully as possible. We use a life course perspective and develop a model in which we link individual aspects with characteristics of individuals' social network and social context. Through our multi-method approach, which links document analysis, large-scale registry analysis, online and field experiments, qualitative in-depth interviews and questionnaire research, we aim to paint a more complete picture of complex giving behaviour.

The DONORS research group is led by Prof. dr. Eva-Maria Merz, and funded in part by a grant from the European Research Council (ERC), ZonMW and Sanquin, the Dutch institute for blood and donors. Members of the research group are PhD candidates Alexandra Ciausescu, Samira Chatila, Lou van Hooff, Yara Dixon and junior researcher Su Someh.

More information about the DONORS group can be found here.