Testing for altruism and social pressure in charitable giving
By: Stefano DellaVigna, John A. List, Ulrike Malmendier.
Contributors: List, John A., 1968-; Malmendier, Ulrike.; National Bureau of Economic Research.
Series: NBER working paper series -- working paper 15629; Working paper series (National Bureau of Economic Research : Online) -- working paper no. 15629.
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research
Published: 2009
Place of publication: Cambridge, MA
Language: eng
Format: Electronic resource
Description: "The NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health provides summaries of publications like this.  You can sign up to receive the NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health by email.  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"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.
Notes: Title from PDF file as viewed on 1/5/2010.

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