How to Design the Ask? Funding Units vs. Giving Money

Charities frequently deviate from the standard donation scheme in which potential donors are asked how much money they are willing to give. Instead, they ask donors to choose how many units of a charitable good (e.g. meals, bed nets, or trees) to fund at a given unit price. In an onlne donation experiment, we compare the performance of such a "unit donation" scheme with that of the standard "money donation" and investigate the factors that could explain differences. We find that despite the additional demands that it imposes on the charity, the unit donation does not outperform the money donation scheme in terms of overall donations. It significantly differs, however, with respect tot the propensity to give. The sign of the difference depends on the granularity of the scheme. When one unit of the charitable good is cheap, unit donation schemes increase the propensity to give and can serve as an effective tool for recruiting donors

Subsidizing Unit Donations: Matches, Rebates, and Discounts Compared

An influential result in the literature on charitable giving is that matching subsidies dominate rebate subsidies in raising funds. We investigate whether this result extends to ‘unit donation’ schemes, a popular alternative form of soliciting donations. There, the donors’ choices are about the number of units of a charitable good to fund at a given unit price, rather than the amount of money to give. Comparing matches and rebates as well as simple discounts on the unit price, we find no evidence of dominance in our online experiment: The three subsidy types are equally effective overall. At a more disaggregate level, rebates lead to a higher likelihood of giving while matching and discount subsidies lead to larger donations by donors. This suggests that charities using a unit donation scheme enjoy additional degrees of freedom in choosing a subsidy type. Rebates merit additional consideration if the primary goal is to attract donors

Wie der Einfluss von Lobbyismus auf die Politik in Deutschland und der EU wahrgenommen wird : Auswertung einer repräsentativen Umfrage in Deutschland zu Lobbyismus allgemein und Lobbyismus in der EU-Klimapolitik allgemein und Lobbyismus in der EU-Klimapolitik

Die Wirkungskanäle von Lobbyismus sind vielfältig und – zumindest in der Theorie – weitgehend bekannt. Jedoch gibt es nur wenig empirische Evidenz hinsichtlich der Wahrnehmung von Lobbyismus in der Bevölkerung. Vor diesem Hintergrund hat das ZEW – Leibniz-Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung gemeinsam mit der Universität Mannheim eine repräsentative Umfrage in Deutschland durchgeführt. Das Haupter-gebnis: Die große Mehrheit der Bevölkerung sieht nicht nur einen enormen Einfluss von Lobbygruppen auf die nationale und die in Brüssel gemachte Politik (EU-Politik), sondern steht diesem Einfluss auch sehr ablehnend gegenüber

Matching schemes and public goods : a review

Matching schemes, where a party matches the contribution of others, reduce the effective price of a good and aim to foster its demand. We review the empirical literature on the effectiveness of these schemes in the context of public goods, especially in the field of charitable giving. As different measures of effectiveness are used, we classify results according to (i) the level of public good provision, (ii) the amount of individuals' contributions, (iii) the likelihood to give and (iv) the contribution conditional on contributing a positive amount. Generalizing results is challenging, since context specific factors matter. Predominantly, a match is found to create a significant increase in public good provision without crowding out individuals' contributions, while the effect on the likelihood of giving and contribution condition on contributing a positive amount is nonnegative. The discussion reveals several avenues for future research, as putting stronger emphasizes on long term effects, public good competition or heterogeneity in responses

Essays in behavioral and experimental economics

This dissertation consists of four self-contained chapters in Behavioral and Experimental Economics. The chapters address distinct research questions about individual behavior in various domains, with a particular focus on prosocial behavior and the role of information in economic decision-making. Chapter 1 studies the demand for, and avoidance of, moral information and its impact on behavior in the context of meat consumption. Chapters 2 and 3 focus on charitable giving. In particular, Chapter 2 explores how asking individuals to fund charitable goods (instead of simply providing money) influences donations, while Chapter 3 complements this line of research by analyzing the effectiveness of subsidies in such a decision environment. Chapter 4 investigates whether beliefs about lobbying in the context of climate protection affect individuals' pro-environmental behavior

Matching schemes and public goods : a review

Matching schemes, where a party matches the contribution of others, reduce the effective price of a good and aim to foster its demand. We review the empirical literature on the effectiveness of these schemes in the context of public goods, especially in the field of charitable giving. As different measures of effectiveness are used, we classify results according to (i) the level of public good provision, (ii) the amount of individuals' contributions, (iii) the likelihood to give and (iv) the contribution conditional on contributing a positive amount. Generalizing results is challenging, since context specific factors matter. Predominantly, a match is found to create a significant increase in public good provision without crowding out individuals' contributions, while the effect on the likelihood of giving and contribution condition on contributing a positive amount is nonnegative. The discussion reveals several avenues for future research, as putting stronger emphasizes on long term effects, public good competition or heterogeneity in responses

How to Design the Ask? Funding Units vs. Giving Money

Unit donations are an alternative fundraising scheme in which potential donors choose how many units of a charitable good to fund, rather than just giving money. Based on evidence from an online experiment with 8,673 participants, we demonstrate that well-designed unit donation schemes can significantly boost giving above and beyond the standard money donation scheme. A decomposition of the underlying mechanisms shows patterns consistent with the conjecture that unit donations increase impact salience and leverage donors’ cognitive biases by changing the metric of the donation space. The potential increase in donations likely outweighs the complications of designing a unit scheme, but requires expert handling of the choice of unit sizes