Pascal Güntürkün, our newly tenured professor, was the second guest in the Research Colloquium. He presented his and his co-authors work on how providing blood donors with feedback and personalized messages can nudge them to share information about their donations on social media, which, in turn, can help with acquiring new donors.

Many charities are struggling with declining numbers of blood donors, creating a blood supply crisis. Thus, finding new ways of attracting donors becomes increasingly important. Social media provides a perfect channel for already existing donors to share feedback about their donations with friends and family. In a 6-month randomized field experiment, Red Cross Austria sent out emails to more than 20,000 donors, providing them with a link to share their feedback on social media and messenger apps. What varied between the donors was the personalization in the post they could share (i.e., the donor’s name), and the information about their donation (i.e., the date and name of the medical centre where the blood was used). The results show that the amount of information in the feedback works differently on new and regular donors – new donors are more likely to share the post if their feedback is personalized. The number of people who later click on the shared post was also affected – providing personalization may attract more potential new donors.

Thank you, Pascal!