Dimensions of donation preferences: the structure of peer and income effects

Experimental Economics - Tập 24 - Trang 274-302 - 2020
Michalis Drouvelis1,2, Benjamin M. Marx3
1Department of Economics, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK
2CESifo Munich, Germany
3Department of Economics, University of Illinois, Urbana, USA

Tóm tắt

Charitable donations provide positive externalities and can potentially be increased with an understanding of donor preferences. We obtain a uniquely comprehensive characterization of donation motives using an experiment that varies treatments between and within subjects. Donations are increasing in peers’ donations and past subjects’ donations. These and other results suggest a model of heterogeneous beliefs about the social norm for giving. Estimation of such a model reveals substantial heterogeneity in subjects’ beliefs about and adherence to the norm. A simple fundraising strategy increases donations by an estimated 30% by exploiting previously unstudied correlations between dimensions of donor preferences.

Tài liệu tham khảo

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