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Decomposing desert and tangibility effects in a charitable giving experiment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

David Reinstein  and
Gerhard Riener
David Reinstein
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, CO4 3SQ, Essex, UK
Gerhard Riener*
Affiliation:
University of Jena, Jena, Germany
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

Several papers have documented that when subjects play with standard laboratory “endowments” they make less self-interested choices than when they use money they have either earned through a laboratory task or brought from outside the lab. In the context of a charitable giving experiment we decompose this into two common artifacts of the laboratory: the intangibility of money (or experimental currency units) promised on a computer screen relative to cash in hand, and the distinct treatment of random “windfall” gains relative to earned money. While both effects are found to be significant in non-parametric tests, the former effect, which has been neglected in previous studies, has a stronger impact on total donations, while the latter effect has a greater impact on the probability of donating. These results have clear implications for experimental design, and also suggest that the availability of more abstract payment methods may increase other-regarding behavior in the field.

Keywords

House money effectExperimental methodologyTangibilityPublic goodsCharitable givingIndividual choiceAltruism

JEL classification

D64: Altruism • Philanthropy • Intergenerational Transfers C91: Laboratory, Individual Behavior
Type
Original Paper
Information
Experimental Economics , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , March 2012 , pp. 229 - 240
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 Economic Science Association

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Footnotes

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-011-9298-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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