IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/11316.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Determinants of the Willingness to be an Organ Donor

Author

Listed:
  • Naci Mocan
  • Erdal Tekin

Abstract

The total value of life lost due to death because of waiting for an organ transplant is greater than $4 billion annually in the United States, and the excess demand for organs has been increasing over time. To shed light on the factors that impact the willingness to donate an organ, we analyze data from the United States and the European Union. The rate of willingness to donate an organ is 38 % among young adults in the U.S., and it is 42 % in Europe. Interesting similarities emerge between the U.S. and Europe regarding the impact of gender, political views and education on the willingness to donate. In the U.S. Blacks, Hispanics and Catholics are less likely to donate. In Europe, individuals who reveal that they are familiar with the rules and regulations governing the donation and transplantation of human organs are more likely to donate. In both data sets individuals who had some encounter with the health care sector -either through a recent emergency room visit (in the U.S.), or perhaps because of a long-standing illness (in the E.U), are more likely to become organ donors. Mother's education has a separate positive impact.

Suggested Citation

  • Naci Mocan & Erdal Tekin, 2005. "The Determinants of the Willingness to be an Organ Donor," NBER Working Papers 11316, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11316
    Note: EH
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w11316.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Viscusi, W Kip & Aldy, Joseph E, 2003. "The Value of a Statistical Life: A Critical Review of Market Estimates throughout the World," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 27(1), pages 5-76, August.
    2. repec:reg:rpubli:282 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Byrne, Margaret M. & Thompson, Peter, 2001. "A positive analysis of financial incentives for cadaveric organ donation," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 69-83, January.
    4. Guadagnoli, E. & McNamara, P. & Evanisko, M.J. & Beasley, C. & Callender, C.O. & Poretsky, A., 1999. "The influence of race on approaching families for organ donation and their decision to donate," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 89(2), pages 244-247.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Joan Costa-Font & Caroline Rudisill & Maximilian Salcher-Konrad, 2021. "‘Relative Consent’ or ‘Presumed Consent’? Organ donation attitudes and behaviour," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 22(1), pages 5-16, February.
    2. Ugur, Z.B., 2013. "From headscarves to donation : Three essays on the economics of gender, health and happiness," Other publications TiSEM 9cfb068c-c08e-47aa-8c44-f, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    3. Miles S. Kimball & Colter M. Mitchell & Arland D. Thornton & Linda C. Young-Demarco, 2009. "Empirics on the Origins of Preferences: The Case of College Major and Religiosity," NBER Working Papers 15182, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Jon Diesel, 2010. "Do Economists Reach a Conclusion on Organ Liberalization?," Econ Journal Watch, Econ Journal Watch, vol. 7(3), pages 320-336, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mocan, Naci & Tekin, Erdal, 2007. "The determinants of the willingness to donate an organ among young adults: Evidence from the United States and the European Union," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 65(12), pages 2527-2538, December.
    2. Sandra Schaffner & Hannes Spengler, 2005. "Der Einfluss unbeobachteter Heterogenität auf kompensatorische Lohndifferentiale und den Wert eines statistischen Lebens: eine mikroökonometrische Parallelanalyse mit IABS und SOEP," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 539, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    3. French, Michael T. & Gumus, Gulcin & Homer, Jenny F., 2009. "Public policies and motorcycle safety," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 831-838, July.
    4. Gopal K. Basak & Chandramauli Chakraborty & Pranab Kumar Das, 2021. "Optimal Lockdown Strategy in a Pandemic: An Exploratory Analysis for Covid-19," Papers 2109.02512, arXiv.org.
    5. Aaron Sojourner, "undated". "Partial identification of willingness-to-pay using shape restrictions with an application to the value of a statistical life," Working Papers 0110, Human Resources and Labor Studies, University of Minnesota (Twin Cities Campus).
    6. Devi, P. Indira & Shanmugam, K.R. & Jayasree, M.G., 2012. "Compensating Wages for Occupational Risks of Farm Workers in India," Indian Journal of Agricultural Economics, Indian Society of Agricultural Economics, vol. 67(2), pages 1-12.
    7. Thomas Kniesner & W. Viscusi & James Ziliak, 2014. "Willingness to accept equals willingness to pay for labor market estimates of the value of a statistical life," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 48(3), pages 187-205, June.
    8. Lakdawalla, Darius N. & Seabury, Seth A., 2012. "The welfare effects of medical malpractice liability," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 356-369.
    9. Jeremy Greenwood & Nezih Guner & Karen A. Kopecky, 2022. "The Downward Spiral," NBER Working Papers 29764, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Yang Guo & Liqun Peng & Jinping Tian & Denise L. Mauzerall, 2023. "Deploying green hydrogen to decarbonize China’s coal chemical sector," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-11, December.
    11. Alexander Gelber & Adam Isen & Judd B. Kessler, 2014. "The Effects of Youth Employment: Evidence from New York City Summer Youth Employment Program Lotteries," NBER Working Papers 20810, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Christopher S. Carpenter & Mark Stehr, 2011. "Intended and Unintended Consequences of Youth Bicycle Helmet Laws," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 54(2), pages 305-324.
    13. Stavins, Robert, 2004. "Environmental Economics," RFF Working Paper Series dp-04-54, Resources for the Future.
    14. Philip J. Cook & Jens Ludwig & Adam Samaha, 2010. "Gun Control after "Heller": Litigating against Regulation," NBER Chapters, in: Regulation vs. Litigation: Perspectives from Economics and Law, pages 103-135, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Joseph Michael Newhard, 2018. "The effect of equalizing differences on tax-price: explaining patterns of political support across industries," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 29(3), pages 281-302, September.
    16. Laura A. Bakkensen & Robert O. Mendelsohn, 2016. "Risk and Adaptation: Evidence from Global Hurricane Damages and Fatalities," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 3(3), pages 555-587.
    17. James Hammitt & Jin-Tan Liu, 2004. "Effects of Disease Type and Latency on the Value of Mortality Risk," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 28(1), pages 73-95, January.
    18. Bloom, David E. et.al., 2013. "Economic impact of non-communicable disease in China and India: Estimates, projections and comparisons," Working Papers 300, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore.
    19. Aldy, Joseph, 2019. "Birds of a Feather: Estimating the Value of Statistical Life from Dual-Earner Families," Working Paper Series rwp19-013, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    20. David Canning, 2006. "The Economics of HIV/AIDS in Low-Income Countries: The Case for Prevention," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 20(3), pages 121-142, Summer.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I0 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - General
    • I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11316. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.