Hassle Costs and Workplace Charitable Giving: Field Experiments with Google Employees

12 Pages Posted: 18 Jul 2018

See all articles by Jessan Hutchison-Quillian

Jessan Hutchison-Quillian

Google Inc.

David Reiley

Pandora Media, Inc.; UC Berkeley School of Information

Anya Samek

University of California, San Diego (UCSD) - Rady School of Management; Center for Economic and Social Research (CESR)

Date Written: June 28, 2018

Abstract

We use field experiments in the employee giving program at Google to demonstrate that hassle costs inhibit donations to charity. Relative to the status-quo control condition involving donation by credit card on the charity’s website, the treatment group received a simpler option to donate via payroll deduction with the click of a button, thereby decreasing the ‘hassle cost’ of giving by a couple of minutes. In each of two experiments (N=647 total participants), we found that reducing hassle costs increased the probability of donation to a promoted charity by at least 50%, without reducing average gift size. This led to large increases in total amount raised. Results from the two experiments lead us to conclude that the convenience of payroll deduction reduces hassle costs and thereby can produce increases in workplace giving for promoted charities.

Keywords: hassle cost, field experiment, charitable giving

JEL Classification: D64, C93

Suggested Citation

Hutchison-Quillian, Jessan and Reiley, David H. and Samek, Anya, Hassle Costs and Workplace Charitable Giving: Field Experiments with Google Employees (June 28, 2018). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3204588 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3204588

Jessan Hutchison-Quillian

Google Inc. ( email )

Mountain View, CA 94043
United States

David H. Reiley

Pandora Media, Inc. ( email )

2101 WEBSTER ST 16TH FLOOR
Oakland, CA 94612
United States

UC Berkeley School of Information ( email )

102 South Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720-4600
United States

Anya Samek (Contact Author)

University of California, San Diego (UCSD) - Rady School of Management ( email )

9500 Gilman Drive #0553
Rady School of Management
La Jolla, CA 92093-0553
United States

HOME PAGE: http://anyasamek.com

Center for Economic and Social Research (CESR) ( email )

635 Downey Way
Los Angeles, CA 90089-3332
United States

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