IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/feb/natura/00380.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Importance of Being Marginal: Gender Differences in Generosity

Author

Listed:
  • Stefano DellaVigna
  • John List
  • Ulrike Malmendier
  • Gautam Rao

Abstract

Do men and women have different social preferences? Previous findings are contradictory. We provide a potential explanation using evidence from a field experiment. In a door-to-door solicitation, men and women are equally generous, but women become less generous when it becomes easy to avoid the solicitor. Our structural estimates of the social preference parameters suggest an explanation: women are more likely to be on the margin of giving, partly because of a less dispersed distribution of altruism. We find similar results for the willingness to complete an unpaid survey: women are more likely to be on the margin of participation.

Suggested Citation

  • Stefano DellaVigna & John List & Ulrike Malmendier & Gautam Rao, 2013. "The Importance of Being Marginal: Gender Differences in Generosity," Natural Field Experiments 00380, The Field Experiments Website.
  • Handle: RePEc:feb:natura:00380
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://s3.amazonaws.com/fieldexperiments-papers2/papers/00380.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stefano DellaVigna & John A. List & Ulrike Malmendier & Gautam Rao, 2013. "The Importance of Being Marginal: Gender Differences in Generosity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(3), pages 586-590, May.
    2. Stefano DellaVigna & John A. List & Ulrike Malmendier, 2012. "Testing for Altruism and Social Pressure in Charitable Giving," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 127(1), pages 1-56.
    3. Eckel, Catherine C & Grossman, Philip J, 1998. "Are Women Less Selfish Than Men? Evidence from Dictator Experiments," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 108(448), pages 726-735, May.
    4. James Andreoni & Lise Vesterlund, 2001. "Which is the Fair Sex? Gender Differences in Altruism," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(1), pages 293-312.
    5. Bolton, Gary E. & Katok, Elena, 1995. "An experimental test for gender differences in beneficent behavior," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 48(3-4), pages 287-292, June.
    6. repec:feb:framed:0087 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gauriot, Romain & Heger, Stephanie A. & Slonim, Robert, 2020. "Altruism or diminishing marginal utility?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 24-48.
    2. van Rijn, Jordan & Quinones, Esteban J. & Barham, Bradford L., 2017. "An Experimental Test of Gender Differences in Charitable Giving: Empathy Is at the Heart of the Matter," Staff Paper Series 586, University of Wisconsin, Agricultural and Applied Economics.
    3. Anya Samek, 2019. "Gender Differences in Job Entry Decisions: A University-Wide Field Experiment," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(7), pages 3272-3281, July.
    4. Becchetti, Leonardo & Degli Antoni, Giacomo & Ottone, Stefania & Solferino, Nazaria, 2013. "Allocation criteria under task performance: The gendered preference for protection," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 96-111.
    5. Binglin Gong & Huibin Yan & Chun-Lei Yang, 2015. "Gender differences in the dictator experiment: evidence from the matrilineal Mosuo and the patriarchal Yi," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(2), pages 302-313, June.
    6. Marcus Dittrich & Andreas Knabe & Kristina Leipold, 2014. "Gender Differences In Experimental Wage Negotiations," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 52(2), pages 862-873, April.
    7. Ainhoa Jaramillo Gutiérrez & Nikolaos Georgantzis & Aurora García Gallego & Miguel Ginés Vilar, 2007. "Cultural And Risk-Related Determinants Of Gender Differences In Ultimatum Bargaining," Working Papers. Serie AD 2007-08, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    8. Jose Apesteguia & Ghazala Azmat & Nagore Iriberri, 2012. "The Impact of Gender Composition on Team Performance and Decision Making: Evidence from the Field," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(1), pages 78-93, January.
    9. Daniela Di Cagno & Arianna Galliera & Werner Güth & Luca Panaccione, 2018. "Gender Differences in Yielding to Social Influence: An Impunity Experiment," Games, MDPI, vol. 9(4), pages 1-12, October.
    10. Schildberg-Hörisch, Hannah, 2010. "Is the veil of ignorance only a concept about risk? An experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(11-12), pages 1062-1066, December.
    11. Boschini, Anne & Muren, Astri & Persson, Mats, 2012. "Constructing gender differences in the economics lab," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 84(3), pages 741-752.
    12. Hasan, Hamid & Ejaz, Nauman, 2013. "Testing for Differences across Genders: A Replication of Ultimatum Game at International Islamic University, Islamabad," MPRA Paper 44923, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Robert Böhm & Tobias Regner, 2013. "Charitable giving among females and males: an empirical test of the competitive altruism hypothesis," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 15(3), pages 251-267, October.
    14. Matthias Sutter & Ronald Bosman & Martin Kocher & Frans van Winden, 2003. "Experimental evidence of the importance of gender pairing in bargaining," Papers on Strategic Interaction 2003-27, Max Planck Institute of Economics, Strategic Interaction Group.
    15. Azmat, Ghazala & Petrongolo, Barbara, 2014. "Gender and the labor market: What have we learned from field and lab experiments?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 32-40.
    16. Jaber-Lopez Tarek & Baier Alexandra & Davis Brent J., 2021. "In-group, out-group effects in distributional preferences: the case of gender," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 22(2), pages 199-214, May.
    17. Lenka Fiala & Charles N. Noussair, 2017. "Charitable Giving, Emotions, And The Default Effect," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(4), pages 1792-1812, October.
    18. Ashraf, Nava & Bohnet, Iris & Piankov, Nikita, 2003. "Is Trust a Bad Investment?," Working Paper Series rwp03-047, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    19. Rigdon, Mary & Ishii, Keiko & Watabe, Motoki & Kitayama, Shinobu, 2009. "Minimal social cues in the dictator game," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 358-367, June.
    20. Bruttel, Lisa & Stolley, Florian, 2020. "Getting a yes. An experiment on the power of asking," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 86(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers
    • H4 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods

    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:feb:natura:00380. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 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: Francesca Pagnotta (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.fieldexperiments.com .

    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.