Giving life and saving lives: A field experiment on motivating umbilical cord blood donations

We conducted a natural field experiment in collaboration with a large OB-GYN clinic in Milan, Italy to study the role of information, timing, soft commitments and reminders in motivating the donation of umbilical cord blood to a public cord blood bank. We present preliminary results from 400 women treated and observed between January 2015 and August 2015.  The provision of information and the possibility to express a non-binding commitment to donate substantially increased the interest expressed toward donation and actions meant to perform the donation, such as requesting donation consent forms and filling them. Our intervention increased actual donations rates from 3.4% (control) to 9-15% in the various treatments. The experiment is ongoing and is expected to end in the summer of 2016.