Learning to donate: Exploring existing and creating new spaces for learning about donating blood products

Blood and plasma donations are vital for healthcare, however in the Netherlands and in Europe there are not enough donors. A key barrier is lack of awareness: many people do not donate because they do not know what donation entails or that more donors are needed. This thesis asks: in what contexts do, and can, people become aware of blood products donation? Adopting a life-course, multi-actor approach to learning and socialisation, it examines various contexts in which awareness emerges or can be cultivated. While knowledge alone is not sufficient to make someone donate, it is a fundamental precursor to any such behaviour. Using registry data from over 23,000 children of Dutch donor parents, Chapter 2 shows that parental donor identity, donation frequency, and timing of parental activity shape intergenerational transmission of donor behaviour. Chapter 3 shows how a serious game about plasma and plasma donation, tested with 636 children at the NEMO Science Museum in Amsterdam, significantly increases knowledge about the subject regardless of players’ demographics or gaming experience. Chapter 4 provides a cross-national analysis of social media use by blood establishments across 13 European countries, revealing a diverse array of communication practices. Chapter 5 advocates for integrating blood donation education into school curricula as a way to prepare the current and future generations of blood products donors. Finally, Chapter 6 reports a preregistered experiment (N=741) showing that informational interventions alone do not significantly affect non-donors’ perceptions, suggesting that once baseline awareness is reached, other mechanisms become more important. This study also highlights the value of measuring intermediary outcomes,such as awareness of consequences, ascription of responsibility, and personal norms,which were positively associated with donation-related behaviours and may better capture the early stages of the donor socialisation process than final behavioural outcomes alone. Together, this thesis contributes to reimagining donor recruitment as a long-term, socially embedded process rather than a purely individual act triggered by a communication campaign. It also offers insights into existing learning and socialisation spaces and describes opportunities for creating new ones.