A Field Experiment on Group Competition and Charitable Giving

AbstractBehavioral economics research has helped with understanding charitable behavior and has shown that charities can encourage donations by carefully designing their pledges. However, there is still scope to extend current research on who gives, what drives the decision to donate and at what levels, especially when behavioral insights are applied in context. In cooperation with a major Italian charity for cancer research, this study implements a natural direct mail field experiment, with over 150,000 letters sent to donors. By exploring the behavioral responses to different donation anchors, evidence was found that, within the given framework, including donation menus significantly increased the average amount donated without affecting the likelihood of donation. Furthermore, introducing additional explanations of how to make a payment significantly increased overall returns. Lastly, individual heterogeneity (high- and low-frequency donors, as well as senior and junior donors) had a direct effect on donations.

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Charity Begins at Home: A Lab-in-the-Field Experiment on Charitable Giving

Games ◽

10.3390/g9040095 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 9 (4) ◽

pp. 95 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Catherine Eckel ◽

Benjamin Priday ◽

Rick Wilson

Keyword(s):

Field Experiment ◽

Charitable Giving ◽

Fire Department ◽

Dictator Game ◽

Charitable Organizations ◽

Fixed Amount ◽

Local Organizations ◽

The Gift ◽

The Individual ◽

Different Levels

Charities operate at different levels: national, state, or local. We test the effect of the level of the organization on charitable giving in a sample of adults in two Texas communities. Subjects make four charitable giving “dictator game” decisions from a fixed amount of money provided by the experimenter. Three decisions target different charitable organizations, all of which have a disaster-relief mission, but differ in the level of operation. The fourth targets an individual recipient, identified by the local fire department as a victim of a fire. One of the four is selected randomly for payment. Giving is significantly higher to national and local organizations compared to state. We find a higher propensity to donate and larger amount donated to the individual relative to all organizations. Subsequent analysis compares a number of demographic and attitudinal covariates with donations to specific charities. In a second decision, subjects instead indicate which of their four prior decisions they would most prefer to implement. Here we see that a majority of subjects prefer the gift to the individual.

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