Defaults in Charitable Giving

A recent CeDEx Working Paper by Jonathan Schulz, Petra Thiemann and Christian Thöni showed that "people are twice as likely to make charitable donations if they are offered a selection of charities than if they are given no suggestion".  Read the full article in Third Sector online.

Abstract of the paper:  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.

Access the full Working Paper CeDEx 2015-06 here.