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Recognizing large donations to public goods: an experimental test

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  • Jeremy Clark

    (Department of Economics, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, New Zealand)

Abstract

Private charities often publicise generous individual contributions or contributors, possibly to encourage others to give. In contrast, public good experiments used to study voluntary giving commonly tell participants only of total contributions. This paper reports an experimental test of the effect on contributions of supplying additional selective information. A control treatment is run that reveals only total contributions over ten one-shot decision rounds. This is compared to a second treatment that also informs subjects of the maximum contribution made in their group after each round. In a third treatment, subjects are further given the opportunity to make costly rewards to the maximum contributor. Revealing generous contributions appears to raise average contributions slightly. Surprisingly, adding the ability to reward large contributors does little to generate further increases, though it significantly raises the variance of contributions. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Suggested Citation

  • Jeremy Clark, 2002. "Recognizing large donations to public goods: an experimental test," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(1), pages 33-44.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:mgtdec:v:23:y:2002:i:1:p:33-44
    DOI: 10.1002/mde.1044
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Jun Zhuang & Gregory Saxton & Han Wu, 2014. "Publicity vs. impact in nonprofit disclosures and donor preferences: a sequential game with one nonprofit organization and N donors," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 221(1), pages 469-491, October.
    2. Laila Kundzina & Baiba Rivza & Liva Grinevica & Peteris Rivza, 2023. "General Fundraising Trends among University Patrons and Entrepreneurs to Promote the Sustainability of Universities," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(14), pages 1-24, July.
    3. Dimitri Dubois & Stefano Farolfi & Phu Nguyen-Van & Juliette Rouchier, 2020. "Contrasting effects of information sharing on common-pool resource extraction behavior: Experimental findings," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(10), pages 1-20, October.
    4. Juliane Proelss & Denis Schweizer & Tingyu Zhou, 2021. "Economics of philanthropy—evidence from health crowdfunding," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 57(2), pages 999-1026, August.

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