Year: 2007
Type: preprint
Abstract: Most charitable organizations depend on private contributions, in the form of monetary gifts, volunteer efforts, or other tangible contributions, such as blood donations. The magnitude of private contributions is impressive—in the United States 89 percent of households donate, averaging $1,620 per year, and 44 percent of US adults volunteer the equivalent of 9 million fulltime jobs (Independent Sector 2001). This level of prosocial behavior is striking in light of the economic incentive to free-ride in the provision of public goods. In order to elicit contributions, charitable organizations use many creative efforts to incentivize voluntary giving: wrist bands, thank-you gifts, organized walks, concerts, and advertised donors lists. The government also helps promote charitable giving by offering tax breaks for donations. The various types of charitable contributions and the many real-life ways of soliciting such donations suggest that there may be different motives for individuals to behave prosocially. These motives are roughly divisible into three broad categories: intrinsic, extrinsic, and image motivation. Intrinsic motivation is the value of giving per se, represented by private preferences for others ’ well-being, such as pure altruism or other forms of prosocial preferences (for surveys, see Ernst Fehr and Klaus Schmidt 2003; Meier 2007). Extrinsic motivation is any material reward or
Authors: Dan Ariely, Anat Bracha, Stephan Meier
Institutions: Duke University, Tel Aviv University, Columbia University
Language: English
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3123690147