RADO II - Tailoring Health Messages - Effectiveness of tailored promotional messages in the areas of organ donation

Public information campaigns have played an important role in increasing awareness of organ donation and the need for more organ donors. However, in a recent study, we found that awareness and knowledge regarding organ donation represented only one of several factors in people´s decisions to engage in organ donation-related behaviors (Schulz et al., 2006). In addition, we noted that the three language groups in Switzerland differ substantially with respect to the factors influential in their organ donation decisions. Few studies, however, have examined cultural differences in health-related prosocial behavior. Existing studies tend to examine wide cultural differences, e.g., China or Japan versus the United States or racial subcultures in the United States. We seek to examine the role of cultural micro-variation (cultural differences within a nationally and racially homogeneous population) building on our previous study of organ donation in Switzerland and to see whether targeting promotional messages to the different micro-cultures would be effective to increase the donor rates.