Hassle Costs and Workplace Charitable Giving: Field Experiments with Google Employees
12 Pages Posted: 18 Jul 2018
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
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