Substitution of social concerns under the Covid-19 pandemic

Arbeitspapier

Think tanks and political leaders have raised concerns about the implications that the Covid-19 response and reconstruction might have on other social objectives that were setting the international agenda before the Covid-19 pandemic. We present experimental evidence for eight consecutive weeks during April-May 2020 for Austria, testing the extent to which Covid-19 concerns might substitute other social concerns such as the climate crisis or the protection of vulnerable sectors of the society. We measure behavior in a simple donation task where participants receive Euro 3 that they can distribute between themselves and different charities. While participants in one treatment have the opportunity to donate, if any, to eight different charities including a rich set of social concerns (Baseline), participants in a second treatment can choose to donate, if any, to the same charities and, in addition, to the Covid-19 Solidarity Response Fund for the World Health Organization (Covid-19). In a third treatment, participants can only decide on distributing the Euro 3 between themselves and the Covid-19 Solidarity Response Fund (Covid-19 Only). Our results show that introducing the Covid-19 Solidarity Response Fund does not significantly change aggregate donations (donations represent 76.3% of endowment in Baseline and 70.2% in Covid-19, t(584) = 1.938, p = 0.053, n = 585). But, given positive donations to the Covid19 Solidarity Response Fund, this entails significantly lower donations to the other eight charities (76.3% in Baseline and 60.8% in Covid-19, t(584) = 5.868, p < 0.001, n = 585). Moreover, our results point to a high support to the WHO Covid-19 Fund: In the treatment where the WHO Covid-19 Fund is the only available recipient, participants donate about 50% of their endowment (Covid-19 Only), while in the treatment where it is one out of nine recipients, donations are still 9.5% of endowment (Covid-19) . Overall, our results indicate that donations to diverse social concerns are partially substituted by donations to the Covid-19 fund; yet, this substitution is far from replacing all other social concerns.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: Working Papers in Economics and Statistics ; No. 2020-30

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers ; Climate; Natural Disasters and Their Management; Global Warming
• Subject: Charitable donation ; Covid-19 pandemic ; climate crisis ; poverty ; substitution of social concerns

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Blanco, Esther ; Baier, Alexandra ; Holzmeister, Felix ; Jaber-Lopez, Tarek ; Struwe, Natalie
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): University of Innsbruck, Research Platform Empirical and Experimental Economics (eeecon)
• (where): Innsbruck
• (when): 2020

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/238254
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET