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Relational Altruism and Giving in Social Groups

Author

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  • Kimberley Ann Scharf
  • Sarah Smith

Abstract

Much fundraising is done by individuals within existing social groups. Exploiting a unique dataset, we demonstrate (i) a positive relationship between social group size and the number of donations; (ii) a negative relationship between group size and the size of individual donations; (iii) no clear relationship between group size and the total amount raised. Free riding with respect to the activity being funded cannot explain the relationship between group size and donation size, since the number of social group members is only a subset of total contributors. Instead, the findings are consistent with the notion that giving in social groups is motivated by “relational altruism”.

Suggested Citation

  • Kimberley Ann Scharf & Sarah Smith, 2016. "Relational Altruism and Giving in Social Groups," CESifo Working Paper Series 5952, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_5952
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Relational Altruism and Giving in Social Groups
      by maximorossi in NEP-LTV blog on 2016-07-20 17:30:34

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    Cited by:

    1. Perroni, Carlo & Scharf, Kimberley & Talavera, Oleksandr & Vi, Linh, 2021. "Online Salience and Charitable Giving : Evidence from SMS Donations," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1325, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    2. Carvajal, Andrés & Song, Xinxi, 2022. "Implementing Lindahl allocations in a warm-glow economy," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 217(C).
    3. Perroni, Carlo & Scharf, Kimberley & Talavera, Oleksandr & Vi, Linh, 2022. "Does online salience predict charitable giving? Evidence from SMS text donations," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 197(C), pages 134-149.
    4. Britta Butz & Christine Harbring, 2022. "Tipping for charity: a field experiment in charitable giving on free walking tours," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 92(5), pages 781-808, July.
    5. Sarah Schnitker & Jennifer Shubert & Benjamin Houltberg & Nathaniel Fernandez, 2020. "Bidirectional Associations across Time between Entitativity, Positive Affect, Generosity, and Religiousness in Adolescents Training with a Religiously Affiliated Charity Marathon Team," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(3), pages 1-19, January.
    6. Simona Cicognani & Sebastian Stein & Mirco Tonin & Michael Vlassopoulos, 2023. "Symbolic incentives and the recruitment of volunteers for citizen science projects," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 75(4), pages 923-940.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    online giving; fundraising; social groups; donations; charity; altruism;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers
    • Z10 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - General
    • H31 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Household

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