Monitoring cues, such as an image of a face or pair of eyes, have been found to increase prosocial behaviour in several studies. However, other studies have found little or no support for this effect. Here, we examined whether monitoring cues affect online donations to charity while manipulating the emotion displayed, the number of watchers and the cue type. We also include as statistical contr...

This paper revisits the question of framing and the provision of public goods. It also addresses the question, is giving in Dictator Games an expression of altruism or an artefact of experimentation? What is unique about this paper is that we employ a “real donation” lab experiment in a context-rich environment: contributions go to actual public goods (i.e. charitable organizations). Our study ...

It is no surprise that people give less to a charity if they are unsure about the impact of their donation. It is less clear as to whether this reduction can be fully explained by risk preferences, or whether some other mechanism is relevant. I show the latter is the case by conducting a controlled laboratory experiment. When participants do not tradeoff their own money with the charity’s money...

This paper explores the consequences of the expiration of charity care requirements imposed on private hospitals by the Hill-Burton Act. We examine delivery care and the health of newborns using the universe of Florida births from 1989 to 2003 combined with hospital data from the American Hospital Association. We find that charity care requirements were binding on hospitals, but that private ho...

A centuries-old philosophical issue--Do honorable intentions make an action praiseworthy or is the best action one that generates the greatest good for the greatest number?--was examined by telling subjects who were working to earn money for themselves or a charity that they succeeded or failed at the task. Confirming predictions derived from personal moral philosophy theory, idealistic individ...

Research on diversity in organizations has largely focused on the implications of gender and ethnic differences for performance, to the exclusion of other outcomes. We propose that gender and ethnic differences also have implications for workplace charitable giving, an important aspect of corporate social responsibility. Drawing from social role theory, we hypothesize and find that gender has c...

Adhering to standard procedures (impartiality), returning favors (reciprocity) or giving based on individuals' needs (charity) may all be considered moral and/or fair ways to allocate resources. However, these allocation behaviors may be perceived as differently motivated, and their moral evaluation may make different demands on theory of mind (ToM) - the capacity to process information about m...

In this paper I estimate income and price elasticities of donations to six different charitable causes to test the assumption that charity is a homogeneous good. In the US, charitable donations can be deducted from taxable income. This has long been recognized as producing a price, or taxprice, of giving equal to one minus the marginal tax rate faced by the donor. A substantial portion of the e...