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Incentives and intertemporal behavioral spillovers: A two-period experiment on charitable giving

Author

Listed:
  • Alt, Marius
  • Gallier, Carlo
Abstract
We test whether and, if so, how incentives to promote pro-social behavior affect the extent to which it spills over to subsequent charitable giving. To do so, we conduct a two-period artefactual field experiment to study repeated donation decisions of more than 700 participants. We vary how participants' first pro-social behavior is incentivized by a wide range of fundraising interventions ranging from soft to hard paternalism. Our design allows us to decompose spillover effects into a pure spillover effect, which identifies the impact of previous pro-social behavior on subsequent donation decisions and a crowding effect, which captures the extent to which the spillover effects are affected by the incentives exerted on the previous pro-social behavior. We find evidence for negative spillover effects. Participants donate less if they completed a pro-social task prior to the donation decision. Most importantly, we find that the spillover effects depend on how the initial pro-social behavior has been incentivized. Especially participants who are incentivized to donate through social comparisons are more willing to give to charity thereafter compared to participants whose initial pro-social behavior is incentivized by monetary rewards. The variations in spillover effects are driven by participants' perceived external pressure in the first pro-social decision.

Suggested Citation

  • Alt, Marius & Gallier, Carlo, 2021. "Incentives and intertemporal behavioral spillovers: A two-period experiment on charitable giving," ZEW Discussion Papers 21-010, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:zewdip:21010
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Charitable giving; Social preferences; Experimental economics; Behavioral spillovers; Policy-making; Economic incentives;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • D01 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles
    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods
    • D04 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Microeconomic Policy: Formulation; Implementation; Evaluation

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