Arbeitspapier
Do subsidies increase charitable giving in the long run? Matching donations in a field experiment
Offering incentives to promote charitable giving (for example, to encourage donations to aid victims of natural disasters) is very popular among governments and private organizations. Many companies, for example, match their employees' charitable contributions, hoping that this will foster a strong willingness to donate. However, systematic analyses of the effect such a matching mechanism has upon voluntary giving are largely absent from the literature. Using a randomized field experiment, this paper tests the short-term and the long-run effects of matching charitable giving. The donations of a randomly selected group were matched, for one period, by contributions from an anonymous donor. The results support the hypothesis that a matching mechanism increases contributions to a public good. However, in the periods after the experiment, when matching donations have ceased, the contribution rate declines for the treatment group. In the end, the matching mechanism leads to a negative net effect on the participation rate. The field experiment therefore provides evidence suggesting that donors' willingness to contribute may be undermined by a matching mechanism in the long run.
- Language
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Englisch
- Bibliographic citation
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Series: Working Papers ; No. 06-18
- Classification
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Wirtschaft
Field Experiments
Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers
Public Economics: General
- Subject
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Public goods
field experiment
matching mechanism
charitable giving
Spende
Test
Matching
Schweiz
- Event
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Geistige Schöpfung
- (who)
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Meier, Stephan
- Event
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Veröffentlichung
- (who)
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Federal Reserve Bank of Boston
- (where)
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Boston, MA
- (when)
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2007
- Handle
- Last update
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10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET
Data provider
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. If you have any questions about the object, please contact the data provider.
Object type
- Arbeitspapier
Associated
- Meier, Stephan
- Federal Reserve Bank of Boston
Time of origin
- 2007