The Organ Donation Dilemma : Donation Card Lottery Instead of Organ Lottery

Organ shortage is a public issue, whereas in many countries the demand for organ donation cards is a purely private decision. Most policies employed to reduce organ shortage do not seem to work very well. The consequence is that receiving a donated organ when direly needed becomes a lottery. In this paper, an organ donation card lottery is proposed, instead of the organ receiving lottery. The card would entitle the card holder to a lottery with prizes as high as ten, five and three million euros. In the lottery scheme, organ donation card holders participate on a year-by-year basis in this lottery if they continue to hold their organ donation cards. A microeconomic analysis using state-dependent utility functions explains the shortage of organ card demand and shows that the prospect of winning a lottery prize can (over)compensate for the negative utility effect of an organ donor card