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Too cold for warm glow? Christmas-season effects in charitable giving

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  • Stephan Müller
  • Holger A Rau

Abstract

This paper analyzes seasonal effects and their potential drivers in charitable giving. We conduct two studies to analyze whether donations to the German Red Cross differ between the Christmas season and summer. In study 1 we find that in the pre-Christmas shopping season prosocial subjects almost donate 50% less compared to prosocials in summer. In study 2 we replicate the low donations in the Christmas season. In an extensive questionnaire we control for several causes of this effect. The data suggest that the higher prosocials’ self-reported stress level, the lower the donations. The higher their relative savings, the lower the giving. Our questionnaire rules out that “donation fatigue” matters. That is, donations do not depend on the number of charitable campaigns subjects are confronted with and their engagement in these activities during Christmas season outside the lab.

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  • Stephan Müller & Holger A Rau, 2019. "Too cold for warm glow? Christmas-season effects in charitable giving," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(5), pages 1-13, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0215844
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0215844
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Müller, Stephan & Rau, Holger A., 2020. "Motivational crowding out effects in charitable giving: Experimental evidence," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    2. Adena, Maja & Hager, Anselm, 2020. "Does online fundraising increase charitable giving? A nation-wide field experiment on Facebook," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Economics of Change SP II 2020-302, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.

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