IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/crb/wpaper/2025-06.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Do Donation Ceilings Increase Contributions? Evidence from an Experimental Study

Author

Listed:
  • François Cochard

    (Université Marie et Louis Pasteur, CRESE (UR3190), F-25000 Besançon, France)

  • Emmanuel Peterle

    (Université Marie et Louis Pasteur, CRESE (UR3190), F-25000 Besançon, France)

  • Jean-Christian Tisserand

    (CEREN (UR 7477), Burgundy School of Business, F-21000, Dijon, France)

Abstract

We study how setting a maximum limit on donations affects how much people give to charity. In a laboratory experiment with 210 participants, we compare three conditions: a neutral baseline, a suggested donation amount, and a capped maximum donation. We find that imposing a donation ceiling significantly increases both the likelihood and the amount of giving compared to the baseline. Moreover, ceilings perform at least as well as suggestions in our experimental setting.

Suggested Citation

  • François Cochard & Emmanuel Peterle & Jean-Christian Tisserand, 2025. "Do Donation Ceilings Increase Contributions? Evidence from an Experimental Study," Working Papers 2025-06, CRESE.
    • Handle: RePEc:crb:wpaper:2025-06
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://crese.univ-fcomte.fr/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/WP-2025-06.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2025
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Charitable giving ; Donation ceilings ; Behavioral interventions ; Lab experiment ; Anchoring ; Completion effect;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers
    • L31 - Industrial Organization - - Nonprofit Organizations and Public Enterprise - - - Nonprofit Institutions; NGOs; Social Entrepreneurship

    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:crb:wpaper:2025-06. 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: Laurent Kondratuk (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/crufcfr.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.