School of Social Sciences, Humanities, and Arts

Abstract:

Introduction: The demand for organs currently far exceeds supply. Understanding individuals’ motivations for deciding whether to donate an organ from a deceased relative would guide outreach efforts.

Methods: Focus group participants and literature were used to identify attributes to create a discrete choice experiment (DCE). Participants (N=86 ages 18 to 31 [mean=20.5]) were presented with 16 choices sets and asked to choose whether they would agree to donate a deceased relative’s organs. The choices contained attributes of the recipient (age, kidney’s lifespan, reason for failure, impact if not transplanted), the deceased donor (donor’s wishes and relationship to decision maker), and monetary incentives (amount, payer, payee). Conditional logit analysis was used to estimate the model, and latent class analysis identified two distinct groups of respondents.

Results: The results suggest a strong preference for donating organs, with the age of the recipient, reason for recipient’s need, and impact of not receiving the organ emerging as important factors. The financial incentive was not important. Latent class analysis suggested the two groups: Respondents in Class 1 placed relatively more importance on the wishes of the donor and having a financial incentive, while those in Class 2 placed relatively more weight on the impact should the recipient not receive the organ. Membership is the groups was predicted by gender and reported risk aversion.

Conclusion: DCE proved to be a useful tool for evaluating important factors in organ donation. Future studies can expand with evaluation of a larger sample representative of general population.