Small is beautiful—Experimental evidence of donors’ preferences for charities

This paper studies the effect of information about a charity’s size on individuals’ donations to that charity. We conducted a framed field experiment with a non-student sample, in which subjects had the opportunity to donate to various charitable causes. The results show that if subjects are to choo...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Economics letters 2013-08, Vol.120 (2), p.242-244
Main Authors: Borgloh, Sarah, Dannenberg, Astrid, Aretz, Bodo
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Charitable contributions
Charities
Decision making models
Donations
Economics
Framed field experiment
Fundraising
Impact philanthropy
Information
Nationalekonomi
Philanthropy
Studies
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This paper studies the effect of information about a charity’s size on individuals’ donations to that charity. We conducted a framed field experiment with a non-student sample, in which subjects had the opportunity to donate to various charitable causes. The results show that if subjects are to choose between large organizations with high annual revenues and small organizations with low revenues, they prefer the small organizations, supporting thereby the prediction of the impact philanthropy model. •Impact philanthropy model predicts: donor utility decreases with charity’s endowment.•We explore how information about charities’ revenues affects willingness to donate.•We use a non-student subject pool to test prediction in a framed field experiment.•Option to choose between charities of different size does not affect donated amount.•Small organizations are selected significantly more frequently than large charities.
ISSN:0165-1765
1873-7374
DOI:10.1016/j.econlet.2013.04.011