The Effects of Seed Money and Refunds on Charitable Giving: Experimental Evidence from a University Capital Campaign

We design a field experiment to test two theories of fund‐raising for threshold public goods: Andreoni predicts that publicly announced “seed money” will increase charitable donations, whereas Bagnoli and Lipman predict a similar increase for a refund policy. Experimentally manipulating a solicitati...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Journal of political economy Vol. 110; no. 1; pp. 215 - 233
Main Authors List, John A., Lucking‐Reiley, David
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published The University of Chicago Press 01.02.2002
Subjects
Capital
Charitable giving
Charity
Criminal solicitation
Donations
Experiment design
Field experiments
Fund-raising
Gift
Nash equilibrium
Policy analysis
Political economy
Political science
Public goods
Seed money
Statistical significance
Universities
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Summary:We design a field experiment to test two theories of fund‐raising for threshold public goods: Andreoni predicts that publicly announced “seed money” will increase charitable donations, whereas Bagnoli and Lipman predict a similar increase for a refund policy. Experimentally manipulating a solicitation of 3,000 households for a university capital campaign produced data confirming both predictions. Increasing seed money from 10 percent to 67 percent of the campaign goal produced a nearly sixfold increase in contributions, with significant effects on both participation rates and average gift size. Imposing a refund increased contributions by a more modest 20 percent, with significant effects on average gift size.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-2
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-1
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ISSN:0022-3808
1537-534X
DOI:10.1086/324392