To Give or Not to Give: The Price of Contributing and the Provision of Public Goods / Johannes Diederich, Timo Goeschl.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Diederich, Johannes.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Goeschl, Timo.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w19332.

NBER working paper series no. w19332

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

To Give or Not to Give

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2013.

Summary:

We examine the relationship between the price of giving and the decision to contribute in a framed field experiment (n = 2,440). In a departure from previous research using match rates and rebates, we vary the price of contributing to the public good directly. Treatment groups differ between subjects by the amount of money subjects have to give up in order to provide one unit of the public good. In contrast to earlier results, the theoretical prediction of a clear negative relationship between price and the decision whether to contribute is borne out by the experimental evidence. We estimate the mean elasticity of the probability to contribute as -0.31. The direct price effect is robust across specifications including sociodemographic controls for the highly heterogenous, Internet-representative non-student sample of subjects.

Notes:

Print version record

August 2013.