This dissertation consists of three chapters that focus on topics in fields of experimental economics and health economics. The first chapter, “Do I Care if You Know I Betrayed You?” , examines how concern for others’ disutility from betrayal can affect the decision to repay trust in the trust game. We use a laboratory experiment to compare trustees’ behavior when betrayal is obfuscated to an identical monetary payoffs situation where betrayal is revealed. We find that more trustees choose to defect in our experiment when betrayal is obfuscated than when it is revealed. Our result suggests that concern for betrayal costs influences not only the decision to trust but also the decision to repay trust. The second chapter, “Increasing Organ Donation via Changes in the Default Choice or Allocation Rule”, utilizes a laboratory experiment to evaluate the effectiveness of alternative public policies targeted at increasing the rate of deceased donor organ donation. The experiment includes treatments across different default choices and organ allocation rules inspired by the donor registration systems applied in different countries. Our results indicate that the opt-out with priority rule system generates the largest increase in organ donation relative to an opt-in only program. However, sizeable gains are achievable using either a priority rule or opt-out program separately, with the opt-out rule generating approximately 80% of the benefits achieved under a priority rule program. The third chapter, “Improving the Approach to Organ Donor Registration”, proposes to improve organ donor registry by providing a persuasive message with the registration request. I designed a laboratory experiment to examine the impact of the persuasive message on donation decisions. The results indicate that the persuasive message has a positive impact on donation decisions in the early rounds of the experiment. Subjects were about 21 percent more likely to register as a donor in round 1 of the experiment when they were provided with a persuasive message. This behavioral difference across treatment decreased as subjects played more rounds, since subjects in the control treatment learned the information in the persuasive message through playing the game. We further find this treatment effect is mainly from subjects who are not organ donors in real life, while the treatment effect is very small for those who are self-reported organ donors.

Hundreds of Canadians die each year while awaiting a vital organ transplant. Consistent with several countries in the world, the demand for organs for transplantation outweighs the supply. In Canada, citizens must actively register to enlist themselves as organ donors after death occurs. The aim of this thesis was to examine and evaluate the acceptability of an emergency department-based organ donation registration strategy. Secondarily, we identified the proportion of emergency physicians, nurses and clerks who are personally registered as organ donors. We conducted three self-administered surveys as well as an a priori sub-study to evaluate the effect of a prenotification letter on postal surveys of physicians. We discovered that key stakeholders in emergency departments are engaged in organ donation and feel that the emergency department is an acceptable place to promote organ donation registration. In addition, we identified several barriers to such a potential intervention which largely revolve around time and resource limitations.

Established within the context of a severe shortage of organs and tissues for transplantation, this thesis explores whether presumed consent for cadaveric organ donation is a legitimate policy choice for Ontario. The medical, legal and social reasons underlying organ scarcity and increased demand for transplantation are examined, and the shortcomings of Ontario’s current express consent system are analyzed. The various criticisms of presumed consent are also explored, including concerns with respect to its effectiveness, level of public support and implications for personal autonomy. Although the Citizens Panel on Increasing Organ Donations recommended against enacting presumed consent legislation, it is argued that the Panel was too dismissive of this concept given a perceived lack of public support. It is concluded that presumed consent can meet the concerns of critics, and that as part of a broader strategy could significantly increase the number of cadaveric organ and tissue donors in the province.

Established within the context of a severe shortage of organs and tissues for transplantation, this thesis explores whether presumed consent for cadaveric organ donation is a legitimate policy choice for Ontario. The medical, legal and social reasons underlying organ scarcity and increased demand for transplantation are examined, and the shortcomings of Ontario’s current express consent system are analyzed. The various criticisms of presumed consent are also explored, including concerns with respect to its effectiveness, level of public support and implications for personal autonomy. Although the Citizens Panel on Increasing Organ Donations recommended against enacting presumed consent legislation, it is argued that the Panel was too dismissive of this concept given a perceived lack of public support. It is concluded that presumed consent can meet the concerns of critics, and that as part of a broader strategy could significantly increase the number of cadaveric organ and tissue donors in the province.

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Thesis ( M.A. (Nursing)) -- University of Limpopo, 2020 / Introduction and background: There is an increase shortage of organs for donation to patients with end stage organ failure worldwide, including in African countries and South Africa as well. Regardless of the number of potential organ donors in South Africa organ availability remain scarce at communities are not actively involved in organ donation. Views of communities regarding organ donation among Sekhukhune communities has not being researched before, the purpose of the study is to explore views of Sekhukhune Community at Limpopo Province of South Africa regarding organ donation. Methodology: Qualitative research method was used, applying descriptive and explorative research designs. The study site was Makhuduthamaga municipality of Sekhukhune district at Limpopo Province, targeting community members as research participants. Fifteen (15) participants were interviewed using semi-structured interviews until data saturation was reached. During data collection the researcher used an interview guide and the participants were audio recorded. Ethical principles were adhered to before and during conduction of the research study. Collected data was analysed using 8 steps of Tech’s coding method. Results: The study revealed that there are different views of community towards organ donation, which contribute to uncertainty, positivity and negativity towards organ donation. Knowledge and understanding of organ donation was found to be a factor that can influence improvement of organ donation among communities at Sekhukhune district. Other factors that were found to contribute the lack of organ donation among communities were religion, culture and stigma attached to organ donation. Conclusion: Community members lack knowledge of organ donation and end up holding in to the myth regarding organ donation. Health awareness, workshop and education to the communities in schools and community facilities such as halls and meetings can improve knowledge on organ donation promoting involvement of community members.

This thesis presents an in-depth ethnographic mapping of deceased donation in a Catalan hospital. A unique site in terms of leading edge technoscientific practices, high rates of donation and its consolidated specialised team of transplant coordinators (TCs). The thesis situates donation as an embedded medical practice and traces the practicalities and specificities of making donation a possibility at the hospital. The empirical accounts offer a distinctive contribution that complements and challenges existing social sciences literature about donation. The latter have predominantly focused on donation as a controversial practice through highlighting the emotional experiences of donors’ families and individual medical practitioners involved. This empirical investigation mobilises, and further develops, STS material semiotics tools to provide an account of donation enacted as both procurement and healthcare. Ethnographic insights illustrate the shifting processes of mutual inclusion and exclusion that underpin the trajectory of integrating donation as a routinized hospital practice, along the recurring set of enduring tensions. This is achieved by following the work of TCs along the stages of donor detection, evaluation, maintenance, consent request and organ extraction. Crucially, the analytical focus decenters the individual actors’ perspectives, broadening the scope of the inquiry and making visible the complex sociomaterial arrangements that take place, inside and outside the hospital, which are rendered as a gradual process of assembling donations. Families’ consent to donation is essential but it is decentered, it is neither that which starts a donation process nor the only factor that contributes to the assembling of a donation process. Unlike available anthropological and sociological studies of donation this work is not about documenting the reductionist transition from patient to donor, whole to parts, person to thing and denouncing the fall from subject to object reified in donation practices. The emphasis here is on tracing the overlap between donors as patients, thus the analysis shows the shifting enactments of the embedded donor/patient configuration, which includes the donor/body, donor/person and donor/corpse figures simultaneously along the donation process. The intervention of bodies as active entities is examined through a speculative and pragmatic elucidation on the situated and relational enactments of responsive bodies and organs. This thesis contributes to contemporary re/articulations of materiality and agency through the lens of distributed joint action and entangled actors from a nonanthropomorphic stance. The research also contributes to current policy debates in the UK, and in Scotland in particular, that propose to tackle the national problem of low donation rates with a legislative move to an opt-out system for donation. It offers robust empirical evidence to contest the dominant organ shortage problematisation that is reduced to the legal polarity of either opting in or out of donation. I suggest that questions about increasing donation rates cannot be restricted to the domain of individual choice as this excludes the situated medical practices that enable the choice of donation in the first place.

This thesis analyzes the presentation of organ donation organization on Weibo. This study used content analysis to find out the Love.Hope organ donation organization’s main content of Weibo’s content. The main content includes six themes. The theme of popularizing organ donation knowledge is the majority. Through analyzing the correlation of content of each themes with shares, likes, and comments. It is concluded that people are more inclined to engage with Weibo posts with popularization of organ donation knowledge and stories of organ donors and recipients, and people also concern about the organ supply and demand situation in China. It turns out that in China, knowledge about organ donation is still scarce, which may be one of the reasons for low donation rate. The organ donation organizations also tend to publish positive information or stories and people’s approval of this kind of information will also make a positive impression on organ donation. However, there are still lots of factors are restricting the development of organ donation in China. Our social media still has a long way to go in helping people to build up their values of organ donation.

Current literature on public communication campaigns suggests that challenges and problems remain, even though generally the effectiveness of campaigns has increased in the past years. Challenges and problems are issue-specific and efforts put into influencing particular social behaviours through public communication campaigns have not been significantly successful. Although public communication campaigns are a popular method employed to influence social behaviours in many societies, campaign strategies inadequately consider the impact of cultural elements on social behaviours. The disappointing results through the use of campaigns are exacerbated by the difficulties faced in translating research observations to appropriate campaign strategies. In view of current challenges, this research examines public communication campaigns. Two main variables shaped this research ??? ???identity??? and ???culture???. The research postulated that a person???s identity influences his or her behaviour. It also argued that culture would impact on behaviour. The theoretical orientation drew on interpretivist perspectives. Using a comparative cross-cultural method, this research nominated the issues of organ donation and waste disposal behaviours in public places and the countries of Australia and Singapore for empirical study. Focus group research was employed. A total of sixteen focus groups were conducted ??? eight groups on organ donation (four in Sydney, Australia and four in Singapore) and eight groups on waste disposal behaviours (four in Sydney, Australia and four in Singapore). In line with the theoretical orientation, ???grounded theory??? was used to analyse the focus group transcripts. It is argued that a person???s decision to organ donation or waste disposal behaviour was intimately related to his or her identity. Cultural elements are critical constituents of identity. This is to say, cultural values, beliefs and attitudes have significant impact on social behaviours. These intricacies were made apparent when each issue was seen in the national contexts of Australia and Singapore. This research concludes that issues of identity can partly explain the type of decision a person makes about organ donation, and the kind of waste disposal behaviour a person enacts. It also argues that the effectiveness of campaign strategies can potentially be enhanced, if the strategies are responsive to people???s identities.

In Ontario, the organs of deceased donors are usually allocated to those recipients who are ranked highest on the province’s waiting list for transplant surgery. However, on rare occasion, a donor, or the donor’s family, will request that an organ be given to a designated recipient or designated group of recipients. The ethical acceptability of these so-called “directed donations” of organs from deceased donors is debated in the transplant literature. The purpose of this study was to elicit the views of a group of transplant professionals in Ontario on the question, “Under what circumstances, if any, should a donor or the donor’s family be allowed to choose the recipient of the organ?” Qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted with 14 Ontario transplant professionals from a range of clinical disciplines. An analysis of these interviews revealed several practical and ethical considerations that the transplant professionals believed to be important in assessing the acceptability of directed donations.