Altruism, that most obvious motivator (sociologists actually talk of a “warm glow” effect), turns out to be more complicated than we think: countries that have non-remunerated volunteer donor systems can have wildly different rates of donations. In Luxembourg only 14 percent of people give blood; over the border in France, it’s 44 percent. Nor do rates of blood donors match rates of other types of volunteering, which you’d expect if blood donors were just nice people wanting to do good. Instead, as economist Kieran Healey found, what changed donor rates was what kind of institution was
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