IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/chu/wpaper/19-31.html

Do Appeals to Donor Benefits Raise More Money than Appeals to Recipient Benefits? Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment with Pick.Click.Give

Author

Listed:
  • John A. List

    (Department of Economics, University of Chicago
    NBER)

  • James J. Murphy

    (Department of Economics, University of Alaska, Anchorage
    Economic Science Institute, Chapman University)

  • Michael K. Price

    (Department of Economics, Finance and Legal Studies, Culverhouse College of Commerce, University of Alabama
    NBER)

  • Alexander G. James

    (Department of Economics, University of Alaska, Anchorage)

Abstract

We partnered with Alaska’s Pick.Click.Give. Charitable Contributions Program to implement a statewide natural field experiment with 540,000 Alaskans designed to explore whether targeted appeals emphasizing donor benefits through warm glow impact donations. Results highlight the relative import of appeals to self. Individuals who received such an appeal were 4.5 percent more likely to give and gave 20 percent more than counterparts in the control group. Yet, a message that instead appealed to recipient benefits had no effect on average donations relative to the control group. We also find evidence of long-run effects of warm glow appeals in the subsequent year.

Suggested Citation

  • John A. List & James J. Murphy & Michael K. Price & Alexander G. James, 2019. "Do Appeals to Donor Benefits Raise More Money than Appeals to Recipient Benefits? Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment with Pick.Click.Give," Working Papers 19-31, Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:chu:wpaper:19-31
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/esi_working_papers/291/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ben Grodeck & Philipp Schoenegger, 2022. "Demanding the Morally Demanding: Experimental Evidence on the Effects of Moral Arguments and Moral Demandingness on Charitable Giving," Monash Economics Working Papers 2022-03, Monash University, Department of Economics.
    2. Alt, Marius & Gallier, Carlo, 2021. "Incentives and intertemporal behavioral spillovers: A two-period experiment on charitable giving," ZEW Discussion Papers 21-010, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    3. Indranil Goswami & Indranil Goswami, 2020. "No Substitute for the Real Thing: The Importance of In-Context Field Experiments in Fundraising," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 39(6), pages 1052-1070, November.
    4. Grodeck, Ben & Schoenegger, Philipp, 2023. "Demanding the morally demanding: Experimental evidence on the effects of moral arguments and moral demandingness on charitable giving," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    5. Bittschi, Benjamin & Dwenger, Nadja & Rincke, Johannes, 2021. "Water the flowers you want to grow? Evidence on private recognition and donor loyalty," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 131(C).
    6. Alt, Marius & Gallier, Carlo, 2022. "Incentives and intertemporal behavioral spillovers: A two-period experiment on charitable giving," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 200(C), pages 959-972.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • D01 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles
    • D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods
    • L30 - Industrial Organization - - Nonprofit Organizations and Public Enterprise - - - General
    • L38 - Industrial Organization - - Nonprofit Organizations and Public Enterprise - - - Public Policy
    • M31 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Marketing and Advertising - - - Marketing
    • M37 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Marketing and Advertising - - - Advertising

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:chu:wpaper:19-31. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Megan Luetje (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/esichus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.