IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp1148.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Charitable Giving as a Gift Exchange: Evidence from a Field Experiment

Author

Listed:
  • Falk, Armin

    (University of Bonn)

Abstract

This study reports data from a field experiment that was conducted to investigate the relevance of gift-exchange for charitable giving. Roughly 10,000 solicitation letters were sent to potential donors in the experiment. One third of the letters contained no gift, one third contained a small gift and one third contained a large gift. Whether a potential donor received a letter with or without a gift was randomly determined. We observe strong and systematic effects from including gifts. Compared to the no gift condition, the relative frequency of donations increased by 17 percent if a small gift was included and by 75 percent for a large gift. Consequently, including gifts was highly profitable for the charitable organization. The contribution of this paper is twofold: first, it shows that gift-exchange is important for charitable giving, in addition to the warm-glow motive. Second, the paper confirms the economic relevance of reciprocity by using field data. This extends the current body of research on reciprocity, which is almost exclusively confined to laboratory studies.

Suggested Citation

  • Falk, Armin, 2004. "Charitable Giving as a Gift Exchange: Evidence from a Field Experiment," IZA Discussion Papers 1148, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp1148
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp1148.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ernst Fehr & Simon Gächter, 2000. "Fairness and Retaliation: The Economics of Reciprocity," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 159-181, Summer.
    2. James Andreoni, 1995. "Warm-Glow versus Cold-Prickle: The Effects of Positive and Negative Framing on Cooperation in Experiments," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 110(1), pages 1-21.
    3. Ernst Fehr & Georg Kirchsteiger & Arno Riedl, 1993. "Does Fairness Prevent Market Clearing? An Experimental Investigation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 108(2), pages 437-459.
    4. John A. List & David Lucking-Reiley, 2002. "The Effects of Seed Money and Refunds on Charitable Giving: Experimental Evidence from a University Capital Campaign," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(1), pages 215-233, February.
    5. George A. Akerlof, 1982. "Labor Contracts as Partial Gift Exchange," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 97(4), pages 543-569.
    6. Andreoni, James, 1989. "Giving with Impure Altruism: Applications to Charity and Ricardian Equivalence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(6), pages 1447-1458, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Armin Falk, 2004. "Charitable Giving as a Gift Exchange – Evidence from a Field Experiment (new title: Gift-Exchange in the Field)," CESifo Working Paper Series 1218, CESifo.
    2. Stefano DellaVigna, 2009. "Psychology and Economics: Evidence from the Field," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 315-372, June.
    3. Michael Kirchler & Stefan Palan, 2018. "Immaterial and monetary gifts in economic transactions: evidence from the field," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 21(1), pages 205-230, March.
    4. repec:grz:wpsses:2016-01 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Thomas Dohmen & Armin Falk & David Huffman & Uwe Sunde, 2009. "Homo Reciprocans: Survey Evidence on Behavioural Outcomes," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(536), pages 592-612, March.
    6. Omar Al-Ubaydli & John List, 2016. "Field Experiments in Markets," Artefactual Field Experiments j0002, The Field Experiments Website.
    7. Grossmann, Volker, 2002. "Is it rational to internalize the personal norm that one should reciprocate?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 27-48, February.
    8. Sadrieh, A., 2003. "Equity versus Warm Glow in Intergenerational Giving," Other publications TiSEM 89f19483-3c73-4838-854f-9, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    9. Uri Gneezy & John A List, 2006. "Putting Behavioral Economics to Work: Testing for Gift Exchange in Labor Markets Using Field Experiments," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(5), pages 1365-1384, September.
    10. Bradler, Christiane & Neckermann, Susanne, 2016. "The magic of the personal touch: Field experimental evidence on money appreciation as gifts," ZEW Discussion Papers 16-043, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    11. Armin Falk, 2014. "Fairness and motivation," IZA World of Labor, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), pages 1-9, September.
    12. Lea Cassar & Stephan Meier, 2017. "Intentions for Doing Good Matter for Doing Well: The (Negative) Signaling Value of Prosocial Incentives," NBER Working Papers 24109, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. John A. List, 2006. "The Behavioralist Meets the Market: Measuring Social Preferences and Reputation Effects in Actual Transactions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 114(1), pages 1-37, February.
    14. Sprinkle, Geoffrey B., 2003. "Perspectives on experimental research in managerial accounting," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 28(2-3), pages 287-318.
    15. Eric W. Chan & Jeremy B. Lill & Victor S. Maas, 2023. "Promote Internally or Hire Externally? The Role of Gift Exchange and Performance Measurement Precision," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(2), pages 493-530, May.
    16. Dean Karlan & John A. List, 2007. "Does Price Matter in Charitable Giving? Evidence from a Large-Scale Natural Field Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(5), pages 1774-1793, December.
    17. Charness, Gary & Kuhn, Peter, 2011. "Lab Labor: What Can Labor Economists Learn from the Lab?," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 3, pages 229-330, Elsevier.
    18. Stefan Palan & Michael Kirchler, 2014. "Friendliness pays off! Monetary and Immaterial Gifts in Consumer-Salesperson Interactions," Working Papers 2014-31, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
    19. Falk, Armin & Zehnder, Christian & Meier, Stephan, 2010. "Did We Overestimate the Role of Social Preferences? The Case of Self-Selected Student Samples," CEPR Discussion Papers 8019, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    20. Stefano DellaVigna & John A. List & Ulrike Malmendier & Gautam Rao, 2022. "Estimating Social Preferences and Gift Exchange at Work," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 112(3), pages 1038-1074, March.
    21. Behncke, Stefanie & Frölich, Markus & Lechner, Michael, 2008. "A Caseworker Like Me: Does the Similarity between Unemployed and Caseworker Increase Job Placements?," IZA Discussion Papers 3437, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    charitable giving; field experiments; reciprocity;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp1148. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.