Paying the Price of Sweetening Your Donation - Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment
Abstract
Using a natural field experiment in a recreational site, a public good almost fully dependent on voluntary donations, we explored the crowding-out effect of gift rewards. First, we investigated whether receiving a map in appreciation of a donation crowded out prosocial behavior and found no significant effect of giving the map. Second, we explored the effect of adding the map to a treatment designed to increase donations. Interestingly, when the gift was combined with our attempt to trigger reputational and self image motives, the probability of donating decreased significantly, compared to the social reference treatment alone.Download Info
To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:1. Check below under "Related research" whether another version of this item is available online.
2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.
Bibliographic Info
Paper provided by University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics in its series Working Papers in Economics with number 460.Length: 13 pages
Date of creation: 05 Aug 2010
Date of revision:
Publication status: Published as Alpízar, Francisco and Peter Martinsson, 'Paying the Price of Sweetening Your Donation - Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment' in Economics Letters, 2012, pages 182-185.
Handle: RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0460
Note: Published in Economics Letters, 2012, Vol 114, pp. 182-185.
Contact details of provider:
Postal: Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg, Box 640, SE 405 30 GÖTEBORG, Sweden
Phone: 031-773 10 00
Web page: http://www.handels.gu.se/econ/
More information through EDIRC
Related research
Keywords: Crowding-out; donation; natural field experiment; reciprocity;Other versions of this item:
- Alpízar, Francisco & Martinsson, Peter, 2012. "Paying the price of sweetening your donation: Evidence from a natural field experiment," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 114(2), pages 182-185.
- Alpízar, Francisco & Martinsson, Peter, 2010. "Paying the Price of Sweetening Your Donation: Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment," Discussion Papers dp-10-06-efd, Resources For the Future.
- C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
- D10 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - General
- D60 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - General
- Q50 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - General
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2010-08-14 (All new papers)
- NEP-CBE-2010-08-14 (Cognitive & Behavioural Economics)
- NEP-EXP-2010-08-14 (Experimental Economics)
- NEP-SOC-2010-08-14 (Social Norms & Social Capital)
References
References listed on IDEASPlease report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
- Martin, Richard & Randal, John, 2008. "How is donation behaviour affected by the donations of others?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 67(1), pages 228-238, July.
- Ariely, Dan & Bracha, Anat & Meier, Stephan, 2007.
"Doing Good or Doing Well? Image Motivation and Monetary Incentives in Behaving Prosocially,"
IZA Discussion Papers
2968, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
- Dan Ariely & Anat Bracha & Stephan Meier, 2009. "Doing Good or Doing Well? Image Motivation and Monetary Incentives in Behaving Prosocially," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(1), pages 544-55, March.
- Dan Ariely & Anat Bracha & Stephan Meier, 2007. "Doing good or doing well? Image motivation and monetary incentives in behaving prosocially," Working Papers 07-9, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
- Bruno S. Frey & Stephan Meier, 2004.
"Social Comparisons and Pro-social Behavior: Testing "Conditional Cooperation" in a Field Experiment,"
American Economic Review,
American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1717-1722, December.
- Bruno S. Frey & Stephan Meier, . "Social Comparisons and Pro-social Behavior - Testing ‘Conditional Cooperation’ in a Field Experiment," IEW - Working Papers 162, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
- Alpizar, Francisco & Carlsson, Fredrik & Johansson-Stenman, Olof, 2008.
"Anonymity, reciprocity, and conformity: Evidence from voluntary contributions to a national park in Costa Rica,"
Journal of Public Economics,
Elsevier, vol. 92(5-6), pages 1047-1060, June.
- Alpizar, Francisco & Carlsson, Fredrik & Johansson-Stenman, Olof, 2007. "Anonymity, Reciprocity, and Conformity: Evidence from Voluntary Contributions to a National Park in Costa Rica," Working Papers in Economics 245, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
- Alpizar, Francisco & Carlson, Fredrik & Johansson-Stenman, Olof, 2008. "Anonymity, Reciprocity, and Conformity: Evidence from Voluntary Contributions to a National Park in Costa Rica," Discussion Papers dp-08-03-efd, Resources For the Future.
- Kolm,Serge-Christophe, 2008. "Reciprocity," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521882651.
Citations
Lists
This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.Statistics
Access and download statisticsCorrections
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0460For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Eva-Lena Neth).
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

