Multiple facets of altruism and their influence on blood donation

Economic theory provides a number of often complementary suggestions for modeling social motives related to altruistic behavior. Questionnaire research on altruism (Rushton et al., 1981) can enable identification of facets of altruism. But can we match these facets with pro-social behavior, stated reasons for such behavior, and theoretical concepts for modeling altruism? In this paper, we show that such matching is possible and plausible. Our questionnaire results suggest that overall altruism is related to charity giving, but not to blood-donation behavior. Only when investigating different facets of altruism separately can we link specific motives to specific behaviors. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.