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Do people donate more when they perceive a single beneficiary whom they know? A field experimental test of the identifiability effect

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  • Al-Ubaydli, Omar
  • Yeomans, Mike

Abstract

According to the identifiability effect, people will donate more to a single beneficiary rather than to many beneficiaries, holding constant what the donations are actually used for. We test the identifiability effect for two novel subject pools (the suppliers and beneficiaries of volunteer labor). We also test a refinement of the identifiability effect where we vary whether or not the single beneficiary is personally known to the solicitees. While the behavior of volunteers is consistent with the identifiability effect, we find that the identifiability effect is reversed for beneficiaries of volunteer labor. Moreover, we find that making the single beneficiary personally known to the solicitees lowers donations by a statistically insignificant amount, suggesting that it does not enhance donations.

Suggested Citation

  • Al-Ubaydli, Omar & Yeomans, Mike, 2017. "Do people donate more when they perceive a single beneficiary whom they know? A field experimental test of the identifiability effect," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 96-103.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:soceco:v:66:y:2017:i:c:p:96-103
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2016.04.004
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    2. Ernst Fehr & Klaus M. Schmidt, 1999. "A Theory of Fairness, Competition, and Cooperation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(3), pages 817-868.
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    Cited by:

    1. Das, Gopal & van Esch, Patrick & Jain, Shailendra Pratap & Cui, Yuanyuan (Gina), 2023. "Donor happiness comes from afar: The role of donation beneficiary social distance and benevolence," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 40(4), pages 865-880.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Solicitation; Donation; Field experiment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers
    • L31 - Industrial Organization - - Nonprofit Organizations and Public Enterprise - - - Nonprofit Institutions; NGOs; Social Entrepreneurship

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