Whatever you need
The Charity of the Extremely Wealthy
Tom Coupe & Claire Monteiro
Economic Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
In this article, we show that, compared to billionaires who have inherited their wealth, billionaires who have made their own wealth are more likely to sign the Giving Pledge and more likely to be in the Million Dollar Gifts list or the Philanthropy Top 50 list of big givers. If they give, self-made billionaires also tend to donate more money. We explore several possible explanations for this correlation between the origin of billionaires' wealth and their charitable giving, and present evidence that suggests that self-made billionaires tend to spend more money, both by giving money away and by buying expensive items.
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Single exposure to the word "Loving" and implicit helping behavior
Virginie Charles-Sire, Jordy Stefan & Nicolas Guéguen
Social Influence, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent studies have reported that exposure to appeals for help containing the word "Love" increased donations. In this study, the effect of exposure to the single word "Loving" was examined on spontaneous helping behavior. Participants in the parking lots of several hypermarkets saw a male or a female confederate who was having difficulty loading a large heavy carton into a car. The confederate wore a T-shirt with a single word printed on the back: "Loving," "Helping," or no word. It was reported that more participants spontaneously offered to help the confederate when exposed to the word "Loving." The importance of this word and further concepts are used to explain these results.
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Amanda Morin et al.
Current Psychology, December 2015, Pages 693-701
Abstract:
Charities that recruit famous humanitarians, or obtain celebrity endorsements, may promote products associated with these altruistic superstars in an effort to increase donations. Previous research supports that "superstar" role models can promote desirable behavior. Charitable organizations may assume if people handle a product associated with a famous humanitarian, they will be inspired and more motivated to donate as a result. An opposite possibility is that physically handling reminders of an extreme altruist may result in contrast effects. Such positive exemplars may result in more negative perceptions of one's own charitable behavior, and decrease the perceived efficacy of one's own contributions. In two studies, participants did or did not touch items said to have belonged to a very altruistic person (Experiment 1) or to Mother Teresa (Experiment 2). Compared to participants in non-touch and other control conditions, those who physically touched items said to belong to an altruist subsequently donated fewer raffle tickets to charity. The results are related to theories of perceived efficacy, metacognitive processes, and the counterproductive influence of extremely positive role models.
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The dark side of donating: How donating may license environmentally unfriendly behavior
Marijn Meijers et al.
Social Influence, Fall 2015, Pages 250-263
Abstract:
Why people donate to charity or how people may be persuaded to donate to charity is a widely studied topic. What happens after people donated to charity, however, is largely understudied. On the one hand, people may be motivated to behave morally in subsequent decisions because of consistency concerns. On the other hand, people may feel licensed to behave less morally in subsequent decisions. In a quasi-experimental field study, we show that donating to charity may have a dark side to it, as it negatively affects subsequent, seemingly unrelated moral behavior. Specifically, our study shows the licensing effect in a real-world setting, as we find that people who donated to charity subsequently show lower intentions to be environmentally friendly.
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Charity, signaling, and welfare
Haley Brokensha, Lina Eriksson & Ian Ravenscroft
Politics, Philosophy & Economics, February 2016, Pages 3-19
Abstract:
Voices on the political right have long claimed that the welfare state ought to be kept small, and that charities can take over many of the tasks involved in helping those at the bottom of society. The arguments in favor of this claim are controversial, but even if they are accepted at face value the policy proposal remains problematic. For the proposal presupposes that charities would, in fact, be able to raise enough money to provide adequate help to those in need, and therefore assumes that charities are able to very significantly increase the number and/or size of donations they receive. We argue that there are good reasons for doubting that charities will be able to do this. Our argument turns on the fact that the most powerful strategy for eliciting donations - namely, allowing donors to use their donation to signal their pro-sociality - has an inbuilt upper limit. If too much emphasis is placed on the signaling opportunities donating to charity provides, donating no longer functions as an effective signal and the motivation to donate declines.
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Volunteering is prospectively associated with health care use among older adults
Eric Kim & Sara Konrath
Social Science & Medicine, January 2016, Pages 122-129
Objective: The purpose of this study was to prospectively examine whether volunteering was associated with a greater use of preventive health care services, but fewer doctor visits and nights spent in the hospital.
Methods: Participants (n=7,168) were drawn from the 2006 wave of the Health and Retirement Study, a nationally representative panel study of American adults over the age of 51, and tracked for one wave (2 years). Logistic regression and generalized linear models were used for analyses.
Results: In analyses that adjusted for sociodemographic factors and baseline health, volunteers were 30% more likely to receive flu shots (OR=1.30, 95% CI=1.16-1.47), 47% more likely to receive cholesterol tests (OR=1.47, 95% CI=1.24-1.74); female volunteers were 53% more likely to receive mammograms/x-rays (OR=1.53, 95% CI=1.28-1.83) and 21% more likely to receive Pap smears (OR=1.21, 95% CI=1.03-1.41); male volunteers were 59% more likely to receive prostate exams (OR=1.59, 95% CI=1.29-1.95). In a model that adjusted for sociodemographic factors, volunteers spent 38% fewer nights in the hospital (RR=0.62, 95% CI=0.52-0.76), however volunteering was not associated with frequency of doctor visits (RR=0.94, 95% CI=0.87-1.02). The association between volunteering and number of nights spent in the hospital was minimally affected after adjusting for potential confounding (baseline health) and explanatory variables (health behaviors, social integration, stress, positive psychological factors, personality).
Conclusion: This is the first known study to examine the association between volunteering and health care use. If future studies replicate these findings, the results may be used to inform the development of new strategies for increasing preventive health screenings, lowering health care use and costs, and enhancing the health of older adults.
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Ex-post Blindness as Excuse? The Effect of Information Disclosure on Giving
Serhiy Kandul
Journal of Economic Psychology, February 2016, Pages 91-101
Abstract:
People passing by beggars without leaving a penny are not necessarily pure money-maximizers. In the world of sincere and dishonest recipients, some donors might anticipate the disutility they will suffer at the moment they realize their help is misdirected and reduce their willingness to donate to avoid these psychological costs. I employ a dictator game with ex-ante uncertainty about recipient's endowment and requests from recipients to study how donors react to ex-post revelation of recipient's type. I observe no difference in donations with and without ex-post information about recipient's endowment. However, if donors could choose if they want to receive such information themselves, nearly a third of dictators choose to remain ignorant. Those dictators who choose to ex-post reveal the endowment of the recipient give significantly more.