Objective  To investigate the influence of perceptions and emotional attitudes on the public's willingness to organ donation and its path of promotion.

  Methods  The mediation effect and structural equation models were established through the convenience sampling method and with ABC attitude model as the theoretical basis to analyze the influence of perceptions and emotional attitudes on the public's willingness to organ donation and the path of promotion.

  Results  Among 4 565 investigated subjects, 621 subjects expressly stated that they were not willing to donate their organs after the death, 701 subjects were willing to donate their organs after the death, but only 259 investigated subjects signed the informed content card of organ donation. The differences in the subjects' willingness to donate their organs were statistically significant in terms of different genders, ages, religious beliefs, places of residence and educational degrees (all P < 0.05). The overall Cronbach's α coefficient of the questionnaire was 0.781, KMO=0.842, with good reliability and validity. In the structural equation model, the path coefficient of perceptions on the willingness to donation was 0.39, while that of attitudes on the willingness was 0.25. As such, perceptions and emotional attitudes had positive impacts on the willingness to donate the organs. The results of the mediation effect model indicated that attitudes played significant mediation effects in the causality relationship of perceptions on the willingness to donate organs, and the mediation effect value was 0.035(P < 0.01). The awareness degree of organ donation was the largest determinant to the perception factor, and the path coefficient on the willingness to donation was 0.20. The sense of social honor was the largest determinant to the attitude factor, and the path coefficient was 0.16.

  Conclusions  Both perceptions and emotional attitudes positively impact the willingness to donate organs. The awareness degree of organ donation is the largest determinant to the perception factor, while the sense of social honor is the largest determinant to the attitude factor. To improve the public's perception level towards the organ donation and increase the public's sense of social honor towards organ donation contributes to the improvement of the public's willingness to donate organs.