A Literature Review

We present an overview of the academic literature on philanthropy, divided in two parts: 1. Who gives how much; 2. Why people give. In part 1 we survey the literature on characteristics of individuals and households that are related to giving. In part 2, we identify eight mechanisms as the most important forces that drive giving: (1) awareness of need; (2) solicitation; (3) costs and benefits; (4) altruism; (5) reputation; (6) psychological benefits; (7) values; (8) efficacy. We evaluate the progress in the almost 500 studies we reviewed and suggest directions for future research on philanthropy. Acknowledgements This paper was written with financial support of the John Templeton Foundation and grant #451-04-110 of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) to Bekkers. A previous version of this paper was presented at the 35 Annual Conference of the Association for Research on Nonprofit and Voluntary Action, November 16-18, 2006, Chicago, the Civil Society Congress, May 31, 2007, Utrecht, and the WWAV Academy, June 4, 2007, Woerden. We thank the audiences for helpful comments and suggestions. Thanks to various colleagues who provided articles we could not find and who clarified their findings. This is work in progress. The current version refers to almost 500 publications. We welcome any comments at [email protected], including suggestions on papers not mentioned yet. An updated version of this paper can be found at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1016108 Copyright © 2007 René Bekkers and Pamala Wiepking.