Nber Working Paper Series Testing for Altruism and Social Pressure in Charitable Giving
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چکیده
Every year, 90 percent of Americans give money to charities. Is such generosity necessarily welfare enhancing for the giver? We present a theoretical framework that distinguishes two types of motivation: individuals like to give, e.g., due to altruism or warm glow, and individuals would rather not give but dislike saying no, e.g., due to social pressure. We design a door-to-door fund-raising drive in which some households are informed about the exact time of solicitation with a flyer on their door-knobs; thus, they can seek or avoid the fund-raiser. We find that the flyer reduces the share of households opening the door by 10 to 25 percent and, if the flyer allows checking a `Do Not Disturb' box, reduces giving by 30 percent. The latter decrease is concentrated among donations smaller than $10. These findings suggest that social pressure is an important determinant of door-to-door giving. Combining data from this and a complementary field experiment, we structurally estimate the model. The estimated social pressure cost of saying no to a solicitor is $3.5 for an in-state charity and $1.4 for an out-of-state charity. Our welfare calculations suggest that our door-to-door fund-raising campaigns on average lower utility of the potential donors. Stefano DellaVigna University of California, Berkeley Department of Economics 549 Evans Hall #3880 Berkeley, CA 94720-3880 and NBER [email protected] John A. List Department of Economics University of Chicago 1126 East 59th Chicago, IL 60637 and NBER [email protected] Ulrike Malmendier Department of Economics 549 Evans Hall # 3880 University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, CA 94720-3880 and NBER [email protected]
منابع مشابه
Testing for Altruism and Social Pressure in Charitable Giving∗ Stefano Dellavigna
Every year, 90% of Americans give money to charities. Is such generosity necessarily welfare enhancing for the giver? We present a theoretical framework that distinguishes two types of motivation: individuals like to give, for example, due to altruism or warm glow, and individuals would rather not give but dislike sayingno, forexample, duetosocial pressure. Wedesigna door-to-doorfund-raiser in ...
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In light of recent evidence, we develop a theory of charitable giving in which donors feel social pressure from a direct solicitation. We show that equilibrium donations are concentrated around a social norm: donors below the norm increase giving while those above the norm reduce it. Despite a higher level of the public good, relatively poor and/or low altruism givers fare worse under social pr...
متن کاملTesting for altruism and social pressure in charitable giving.
Every year, 90% of Americans give money to charities. Is such generosity necessarily welfare enhancing for the giver? We present a theoretical framework that distinguishes two types of motivation: individuals like to give, for example, due to altruism or warm glow, and individuals would rather not give but dislike saying no, for example, due to social pressure. We design a door-to-door fund-rai...
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تاریخ انتشار 2011