Choice Overload, Information Acquisition, and Gift Incentives in an Altruistic Context: Economic Experiments Exploring Decision Making in Charitable Giving

This dissertation contains three essays on economic experiments concerning altruistic motives. The first chapter, “Choice Overload and Charitable Giving: Can There Be Too Much of a Good Thing?” concentrates on the effects of list sizes of charitable options on an individual’s decision making. The second chapter, “Is No News Good News? Motivated Reasoning in Charitable Giving,” focuses on the impact of information acquisition on an individual’s altruistic contributions. Finally, the third chapter, “Thank You, but No Thank You: Gift Incentives in Charitable Giving,” investigates gift incentives and their influence on donating behavior. In the first chapter, “Choice Overload and Charitable Giving: Can There Be Too Much of a Good Thing?” subjects are confronted with a choice set of charitable options in an altruistic framework. Choice overload is a phenomenon whereby decision makers are overwhelmed by the choices they face. This can lead to poor decisions and reductions in welfare. I conduct a field experiment where subjects face three donation lists of varying lengths and are asked whether they would like to donate to the charities offered. On the extensive margin, I find a U-shape exists for giving i.e., donations are least frequent with an intermediate number of options. On the intensive margin, there is no significant difference between the donated amounts individuals give with the different list size treatments. In the second chapter, “Is No News Good News? Motivated Reasoning in Charitable Giving,” we run an experiment where varying amounts of information on charitable organizations are given to different treatments. We assume that more information is better to less whereby consumers are better informed and thus can make better decisions. Yet, we find when individuals are faced with sufficient flexibility, individuals sometimes recruit information to prioritize self-interest at the cost of morality. This is known as motivated reasoning. We find that when more information is present about charities (such as leadership compensation and financial summaries) at the beginning of the donation decision, individuals are becoming less likely to donate. In the third chapter, “Thank You, but No Thank You: Gift Incentives in Charitable Giving,” I employ a field experiment where I offer different gift incentives in return for donating to a charity. There is not much consensus on how extrinsic incentives (such as conditional thank-you gifts or raffles to win a gift) impact giving. Some prior research has found that offering extrinsic incentives can crowd out intrinsic incentives for giving and thus individuals donate less and less often. For this study, there are three treatments which include a Voluntary Contribution Mechanism (VCM) where subjects are asked if they want to donate to a charity with no extra incentives, a conditional gift mechanism where subjects are given a conditional gift if they donate, and a raffle mechanism where a chance to win a larger prize if one donates. This is an ongoing study which hopes to provide avenues for future work on charitable giving and policy recommendations for charitable organizations on how to best collect donations

Why would you choose it? - Exploring Culturally Motivated Life Choices Through In-depth Interviews with American University Students of Chinese Origin.

The goal of this paper is to see whether the interviewed students of American Midwestern universities born in China and in America are influenced by traditional Chinese values when making important life choices when it comes to education, work, and romantic relationships. While it is not my intention to make the results of this study generalizable to a larger population, I believe that themes and patterns observed here are worth analyzing and can constitute a starting point for larger projects to follow

Determination of isoquinoline alkaloids contents in two Algerian species of Fumaria (Fumaria capreolata and Fumaria bastardi)

This paper describes a fast and efficient procedure to separate and identify isoquinoline alkaloids from methalonic extract of two Algerian Fumaria (Fumariacea) species (Fumaria capreolata L. and Fumariabastardi L.) used in traditional medicine in cases of hepatobiliary disfunction and diarrhoea. Total quinolizidine alkaloid contents were 426 mg/100 g (F. capreolata) and 521 mg/100 g (F. bastardi). Theisoquinoline alkaloids, stylopine, protopine, fumaritine, fumaricine, fumarophycine, fumariline and fumarofine were determined by gas chromatography – mass spectrometry (GC-MS) in aerial parts ofboth Fumaria capreolata and Fumaria bastardi. In the first species, an ester of phtalic acid was identified, and in the second species a peak seems to be a benzophenanthridine, probably a dehydro derivative and three other peaks which were identified as phtalidisoquinoline, one of them seems to bedihydrofumariline. The chemotaxonomic significance of the results is discussed

Re-ordenando la ciudad: inseguridades frente al avance del nuevo orden socio-territorial

El presente trabajo aborda la temática de violencia estatal generada a través de las políticas de hábitat en la provincia de Córdoba, en la búsqueda de construir un nuevo ordenamiento socioterritorial. Con la consecuente inseguridad provocada en algunos sectores frente a las políticas públicas.Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educació

The influence of physical exercise on alterations in concentrations of neuropeptide Y, leptin and other selected hormonal and metabolic parameters in sportspeople

The aim of this study was to evaluate the behaviour and relationships between hormones, and metabolic blood parameters essential for energetic balance control during rest, exercise and restitution. Two groups of young boys (17 cyclists and 11 canoeists) were tested twice. Tests were performed on a cycloergometer. During the first study, anaerobic threshold was determined by a non-invasive method and in the second one - cyclists performed prolonged 2-hour exercise below anaerobic threshold and canoeists - 20-min effort above anaerobic threshold. Neuropeptide Y (NPY), leptin, insulin, C-peptide, metabolic clearance of insulin, growth hormone (GH), somatomedin C (IGF1) and glycaemia were analysed. Values of NPY and GH measured directly after exercise were significantly higher than the values of these parameters at rest, in both groups. However, effort did not cause significant changes in leptin concentration and insulin clearance in both groups. Besides, it was shown that 20-min exercise had no influence on insulin concentration in canoeists blood. In these studies significantly lower IGF1 value during restitution than directly after exercise was also noted in the cyclists group. Relations between measured hormonal parameters indicate that some mechanisms, which supply the organism with necessary energetic substrates during the effort, and accelerate the restitution are activated

Berberine improved experimental chronic colitis by regulating interferon-gamma- and IL-17A-producing lamina propria CD4(+) T cells through AMPK activation

The herbal medicine berberine (BBR) has been recently shown to be an AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) productive activator with various properties that induce anti-inflammatory responses. We investigated the effects of BBR on the mechanisms of mucosal CD4+T cell activation in vitro and on the inflammatory responses in T cell transfer mouse models of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). We examined the favorable effects of BBR in vitro, using lamina propria (LP) CD4+ T cells in T cell transfer IBD models in which SCID mice had been injected with CD4+CD45RBhigh T cells. BBR suppressed the frequency of IFN-γ- and Il-17A-producing LP CD4+ T cells. This effect was found to be regulated by AMPK activation possibly induced by oxidative phosphorylation inhibition. We then examined the effects of BBR on the same IBD models in vivo. BBR-fed mice showed AMPK activation in the LPCD4+ T cells and an improvement of colitis. Our study newly showed that the BBR-induced AMPK activation of mucosal CD4+ T cells resulted in an improvement of IBD and underscored the importance of AMPK activity in colonic inflammation