CeDEx
Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics

CeDEx 2015-06: Defaults in charitable giving

Abstract

In an experimental setup we investigate the effect of defaults on charitable giving. In the treatment group, subjects can either specify a charity of their choice, or select one from a default list of five well-known charities; in the control group we do not provide the list. In a sample of 869 subjects we find that offering a list of default charities doubles both the fraction of donors and the aggregate amount of donations. These findings point to the importance of psychological factors like a effective reactions in donation decisions.

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Authors

Jonathan Schulz, Petra Thiemann and Christian Thöni

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Posted on Wednesday 29th April 2015

Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics

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