Australasian Marketing Journal 11 (1), 2003 87 Predicting Willingness to Donate Blood Predicting Willingness to Donate Blood Judith Holdershaw, Philip Gendall & Malcolm Wright Abstract New Zealand shares a common problem with other countries: a shortage of blood donors. Approximately 4% of New Zealand’s total population donate blood, yet up to 20% may need to receive donated blood or blood products. However, there has been little success in accurately predicting willingness to donate blood, and greater knowledge is needed of those variables most likely to predict potential donors’ behaviour, so that efforts to increase the number of blood donors can be effectively directed. This study compared the predictive ability of Ajzen’s theory of planned behaviour, based on the measurement of attitudinal variables, and Labaw’s behavioural approach, in the context of willingness to donate blood. The findings indicated attitudinal variables were better predictors of behavioural intentions but a behavioural approach better predicted reported donation behaviour. This result provides support for further study of the framework proposed by Labaw. Keywords: Blood donation, Predicting behaviour, Theory of planned behaviour 1. Introduction Tighter screening of New Zealand blood donors in recent years has led to a decrease in the volume of blood collected. The onset of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and the introduction of donor screening for Hepatitis have reduced New Zealand’s pool of potential blood donors. More recently, people who have spent a total of six months or more in the United Kingdom, between 1 January 1980 and 31 December 1996, no longer qualify to give blood because of the risk of blood contaminated with CJD (Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease). Despite the fact that the volume of collected blood has fallen, there has been an increase in the demand for whole blood and blood products as a result of greater use of blood products to treat medical conditions such as cancer, and because new uses have been found for blood products (Ibrahim & Mobley, 1993). Unfortunately, this increased demand for blood has led to a shortage of active blood donors in New Zealand and worldwide. The volume of blood collected could be increased in two ways: by encouraging new donors to start donating, or by encouraging existing donors to donate more often, or both. The challenge for blood collection services is to devise strategies that encourage non-donors to make their first donation, to devise further strategies to reduce donor dropout, and to motivate behaviour change that will lead to committed regular donation. Establishing a reliable method of predicting who is most likely to donate blood would improve the likelihood of such strategies succeeding. Much of the previous research on blood donation has focussed on measuring and understanding attitudinal variables, or testing existing models of attitude- intention-behaviour associations (Allen & Maddox, 1990). In fact, research on donation behaviour has been a major arena for testing attitude theory in recent years, particularly research using the Fishbein (1967) extended model of behavioural intentions (LaTour & Manrai, 1989). Yet, in 1969 Wicker stated, …research is needed on various postulated sources of influence on overt behaviour. Once these variables are operationalised, their contribution and the contribution of attitudes to the variance of overt behaviour can be determined. Such research may lead to the identification