Can you own a blood donation?
It may sound silly, but feeling like you own a non-physical object is more common than you might think. We feel like we own our job or projects we’ve spent time working on. Volunteers have even been found to experience ownership over the nonprofit organisation they volunteer for. This perceived sense of ownership is called psychological ownership, and it’s something that we can experience over both physical and non-physical objects.
So why ownership in blood donation?
Well, blood is pretty important. The World Health Organization categorises blood and blood components (plasma, platelets etc) as essential medicines. This means that blood needs to be readily available to meet priority healthcare needs for any population. However, unlike other essential medicines the medical need for blood requires consistently available and willing blood donors. Because of this, a challenge for any healthcare system is maintaining a sufficient pool of donors willing to give blood.
In previous studies, we tested whether Australian blood donors experienced psychological ownership. We found that the ownership blood donors experienced towards a blood service was positively associated with how much these donors intended to give blood in the future. Based on these findings, interventions which encourage ownership over the blood service could also encourage people to give blood. However, if we want to enhance ownership in donors, we first need to understand how donors experience psychological ownership in the first place.
How do blood donors experience psychological ownership?
We interviewed twenty current blood donors across Australia. Through thematic analysis we learned if and how blood donors develop psychological ownership.
Owning the blood donation experience.
Although most participants felt positively towards the blood service itself, there wasn’t ownership. Instead, participants spoke about having ownership over their experience of donating blood. For example, one participant described that while their donation was facilitated by the blood service, they were able to have ownership of their donation:
“So I guess there is definitely like some ownership over donation. Because if you can go in and [the blood service staff] say… ‘which arm’ and you go, ‘oh, this one’s the only good vein’ or like, ‘I prefer this one.’ So that’s sort of you being like, ‘yeah, this is my donation. You’re sort of the conduit to get the blood out of me. Absolutely. But like… I know how this donation is supposed to go’.”
Controlling your blood donation.
These interviews provided insights on what components of a donation experience offer participants additional choices outside of the standard donation procedure. For example, while some participants chose to closely follow the pre- and post-donation instructions given by the blood service, others chose to deviate from these guidelines and prepare for their donation in a way that was more intuitive to them.
“With the rehydration protocol I’m not measuring my water. I know the first few times I [donated blood] I was really conscious of how many mLs I was putting in, and following everything to a T. I think now I have a bit more of an intuitive sense of my hydration. So that’s now more ad hoc.”
Knowing your blood donation.
Participants especially valued donation-based knowledge that they could use. For example, one participant described using a combination of their experiential understanding of blood donation with more technical process-based knowledge to have a comfortable donation:
“I take my own blanket, because I just get really cold. I also know that my body, I need a heat pack to just help. Because I do get cold and when you get cold your blood, your vessels constrict, and then your blood flow’s not high enough. So I have a heat pack.”
What does this mean?
In our research, participants did not express ownership of the blood service, but they did express ownership of donating blood. This makes a lot of sense. Ownership can be gained through controlling, knowing and investing oneself into a possession. However, blood donation is a highly structured procedure which limits opportunities for donors to control or intimately know the blood service. So instead, participants felt ownership over what they could control and know: their individual donation experience.
Our research provides a foundation for understanding how blood donors interpret psychological ownership and how ownership might be used in the future to encourage blood donation. Practically, blood services may be able to encourage donors to experience more ownership over their blood donation through facilitating donors’ ability to personalise and control their donations within safe limits. This could look like blood donors creating personalised donation schedules. Likewise, any additional educational materials that donors already receive (e.g., to decrease anxiety) that provide usable donation-based information may have the additional benefit of increasing donors’ sense of ownership.
Click on the link to read the free full text article: Edwards, A. R., Thorpe, R., Masser, B. M., & Barlow, F. K. (2024). ‘Yeah, this is my donation’: An application of psychological ownership in blood donation. Journal of Health Psychology, ttps://doi.org/10.1177/13591053241254581