Testing Annual Increases in Charitable Donations

Abstract

In this paper, I briefly summarise the findings of a study conducted with a large employer to encourage participants to sign up to annual increases in their donations, rather than a one off increase in their donations. Our results are inconclusive, with qualitative large, but statistically insignificant effects of the ‘menu’ of annual enrolment options on the amounts donated, but more modest effects on donation increases per se.

Keywords: field experiments, charitable giving, escalations, behavioural economics