Impure thoughts of charitable giving

To this date, theoretical and empirical research has been insufficient to make confident predictions on the demand for hours given to nonprofit organizations. This dissertation is distinct from previous research in two ways. One is that it presents a theoretical model that derives demand equations for time without prices. This is accomplished by use of a separable utility function in which all income is spent in the branch where market goods are chosen. The goods "volunteer time" and leisure are chosen in a branch of the utility function where the only binding constraint is the number of hours left in a day after work and sleep. The second way this work is distinct is that demand for volunteer time by households is estimated by using data on each spouse's gifts. The simultaneous estimation of the parameters of the model gives insights to the giving behavior among spouses.;This paper offers a different theoretical approach to modeling gifts of time by modeling the household instead of just an individual. Empirical results found herein support a household approach to estimation of time giving behavior. The simultaneous decisions of the household on the spouse's level of time gifts are ground out from the theoretical model and tested with a bivariate tobit model. The theory work put forth also recognizes the potential for an agent to receive utility not only from the level of the public good but also from his/her private contribution to the public good. This concept is known as joint products theory. Empirical results found herein support the idea that households receive utility in multiple ways from their gifts of time. The theoretical models are tested empirically by analyzing a national sample of giving behavior. Statistical tests are performed to show the joint products approach is preferred to a pure public and pure private consumption model. Application of the joint products model proves to be essential to the determination of time gifts.