Lines of scientific research in the study of blood donor behavior from a social marketing perspective

Abstract

Although blood is essential in healthcare systems for medical and surgical use, it is still a scarce resource. Given that blood cannot be produced artificially, donors are the backbone of the system, which is why it is crucial for transfusion centers to understand the factors that determine their behavior. The goal of this study is to help decision-makers at transfusion understand what lines of research have been developed in the literature and which ones might be useful to define and assess actions related to the attributes of the donation system and donor behavior. To that end, this work aims to present an overview of the available literature on blood donor behavior from a social marketing perspective, which is of paramount importance in the context of blood donation. Based on the results of this review, which was performed by using the text mining methodology, this study presents current lines of investigation, and proposes additional future lines.