IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/27248.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Viewers like you: community norms and contributions to public broadcasting

Author

Listed:
  • Knack, Stephen
  • Kropf, Martha

Abstract

The logic of collective action (Olson 1965) suggests that public broadcasting may be underprovided, because non-contributors are not excluded from receiving the benefits. Why do so many individuals voluntarily contribute to public television, even though they can obtain the benefits of public television without contributing? We explore the hypothesis that giving to public broadcasting is determined in part by the strength of "civic norms" that limit the opportunistic behavior of individuals in large-numbers prisoners' dilemma settings. We also explore a variety of other explanations for charitable giving and collective action, including group size, tax deductibility, crowd out, and selective incentives. Our findings provide evidence linking civic norms and giving to public broadcasting. Education and income have indirect effects through strengthening civic norms. We find some evidence that selective incentives increase the average size of contributions among those who contribute.

Suggested Citation

  • Knack, Stephen & Kropf, Martha, 2003. "Viewers like you: community norms and contributions to public broadcasting," MPRA Paper 27248, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:27248
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/27248/1/MPRA_paper_27248.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andreoni, James, 1990. "Impure Altruism and Donations to Public Goods: A Theory of Warm-Glow Giving?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 100(401), pages 464-477, June.
    2. Ribar, David C. & Wilhelm, Mark O., 1995. "Charitable Contributions to International Relief and Development," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 48(2), pages 229-244, June.
    3. Goetze, Linda & Glover, T F & Biswas, B, 1993. "The Effects of Group Size and Income on Contributions to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 77(2), pages 407-414, October.
    4. DiPasquale, Denise & Glaeser, Edward L., 1999. "Incentives and Social Capital: Are Homeowners Better Citizens?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(2), pages 354-384, March.
    5. Smith, Vincent H. & Kehoe, Michael R. & Cremer, Mary E., 1995. "The private provision of public goods: Altruism and voluntary giving," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(1), pages 107-126, September.
    6. Clotfelter, Charles T., 1985. "Federal Tax Policy and Charitable Giving," National Bureau of Economic Research Books, University of Chicago Press, edition 1, number 9780226110486, December.
    7. Sugden, Robert, 1984. "Reciprocity: The Supply of Public Goods through Voluntary Contributions," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 94(376), pages 772-787, December.
    8. Charles T. Clotfelter, 1985. "Federal Tax Policy and Charitable Giving," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number clot85-1.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. René Bekkers & Ingrid Veldhuizen, 2008. "Geographical Differences In Blood Donation And Philanthropy In The Netherlands - What Role For Social Capital?," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 99(4), pages 483-496, September.
    2. Prasenjit Banerjee & Rupayan Pal & Jason F. Shogren, 2016. "Honor and stigma in mechanisms for environmental protection," Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai Working Papers 2016-017, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, India.
    3. Prasenjit Banerjee & Rupayan Pal, 2016. "Honor and Stigma in Mechanisms for Environmental Protection," Working Papers id:10883, eSocialSciences.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    collective action; selective incentives; norms; free riding; social capital; public goods;

    JEL classification:

    • D7 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making
    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification

    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:pra:mprapa:27248. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Joachim Winter) or (Rebekah McClure). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    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 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.