title: Economic crisis and blood donation: How are donors' motivations changing?
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The economic crisis has exasperated people's feelings of loneliness; job instability often does not allow people to commit to voluntary work. The present work proposes to examine whether the motivations to donate blood have changed before and during the period of economic crisis, taking into consideration donors' gender. We adopted Omoto & Snyder's functionalist approach, which states that blood donation serves different functions for any one person, who may have different motivations from those held by other people.
  
  
  METHODS
  We compared six-year pre-post (t1 "pre-crisis": 2008 - t2 "during the crisis": 2014) data on a sample of blood donors in a single blood donation center situated in Northern Italy. T-test was used for data analysis. Three hundred thirty donors (age range 18-60, M = 32.6, SD = 9.53; 54.5% male) were administered a survey at t1 and 444 (age range 18-60, M = 37.8, SD = 10.16; 68% male) six years later at t2. In both surveys, participants were administered a questionnaire with socio-demographic items and a version of Omoto & Snyder's Motivations to Volunteer scale adapted to blood donation.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Donors' motivation priorities did not vary over time. Values and Self-enhancement motivations are the most prevalent. Knowledge and Ego-protection motivations decreased with the upsurge of the crisis. Women, in general, report higher mean values than men do for Values and Ego-protection motivations.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These results can offer valuable clues for the agencies that manage blood collection.
authors.affiliation: Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano, Italy. Electronic address: sara.alfieri@unicatt.it.
authors.forename: Sara
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Alfieri
authors.affiliation: Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano, Italy.
authors.forename: Paolo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Guiddi
authors.affiliation: Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano, Italy.
authors.forename: Elena
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Marta
authors.affiliation: AVIS (Associazione dei Volontari Italiani di Sangue - Italian Association of Blood Donors), Italy.
authors.forename: Vincenzo
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Saturni
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001782:Blood Donors; D057172:Economic Recession; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009042:Motivation
keywords: Blood donors; Economic crisis; Motivations