Bidding to Give in the Field: Door-to-Door Fundraisers Had it Right from the Start
Tinbergen Institute Discussion Paper No. 11-070/1
37 Pages Posted: 22 Apr 2011
Date Written: April 15, 2011
Abstract
In a door-to-door fundraising field experiment, we study the impact of fundraising mechanisms on charitable giving. We approached about 4500 households, each participating in either an all-pay auction, a lottery, a non-anonymous voluntary contribution mechanism (VCM), or an anonymous VCM. In contrast to the VCMs, households competed for a prize in the all-pay auction and the lottery. Although the all-pay auction is the superior fundraising mechanism both in theory and in the laboratory, it raised the lowest revenue per household in the field. Our experiment reveals two potential explanations for this anomaly. First, participation in the all-pay auction is substantially lower than in the other mechanisms while the average donation for those who contribute is only slightly higher. We explore various explanations for this lower participation and favor one that argues that competition in the all-pay mechanism crowds out intrinsic motivations to contribute. Second, the non-anonymity may have a negative effect: conditional on donating, households contribute less in the non-anonymous VCM than in the anonymous VCM. Among the non-anonymous mechanisms, the lottery raises the largest revenue per household. Notably, the method that scored best, the anonymous VCM, is the one most used by door-to-door fund raisers in the Netherlands.
Keywords: Charitable Fundraising, Field Experiment, Auction, Lottery, Voluntary Contribution Mechanism
JEL Classification: C93, D44, D64, H41
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Here is the Coronavirus
related research on SSRN
Recommended Papers
-
By John A. List
-
Do People Behave in Experiments as in the Field? - Evidence from Donations
By Matthias Benz and Stephan Meier
-
By Jeffrey P. Carpenter and Erika Seki
-
By Erika Seki and Jeffrey P. Carpenter
-
Cooperativeness and Impatience in the Tragedy of the Commons
By Ernst Fehr and Andreas Leibbrandt
-
Cooperativeness and Impatience in the Tragedy of the Commons
By Ernst Fehr and Andreas Leibbrandt
-
Can We Infer Social Preferences from the Lab? Evidence from the Trust Game
By Nicole M. Baran, Paola Sapienza, ...
-
By Erika Seki and Jeffrey P. Carpenter
-
By Pieter M. Serneels, Magnus Lindelow, ...
