Field Experiments on Charitable Giving at a Public University

该项目包括一个关于慈善捐赠动机的实地实验，与一所主要公立研究型大学的年度基金和资本捐赠活动一起进行。研究人员和大学之间的合作有可能回答三个主要捐赠动机的重要问题：声望，互惠和社会规范。这些实验评估了声望（承认）和捐赠类别对捐赠的影响;礼物和互惠（礼物交换）作为捐赠动机的重要性;以及社会影响和规范遵守对捐赠的作用。大样本量使研究人员能够比较各种筹款技术的有效性，单独和组合。大约30万名前学生被随机分配到不同的募捐信。这些信件改变了大学对捐赠的认可以及建议捐赠的水平，以确定现有文献中记录的类别底部的聚束是否是由于参考点或对声望的渴望。此外，相关治疗提供礼物以换取捐款，这在慈善组织中很常见。通过改变礼物的大小、所需的捐赠金额以及选择不接受礼物的机会来确定慈善机构互惠礼物赠送影响捐赠行为的机制。捐赠者的捐赠既被用来研究最初的募捐，也被用来研究慈善事业的长期持续性。慈善捐赠在美国发挥着重要作用。本研究的结果将为从业者，特别是高等教育从业者，提供如何更有效地筹集资金的指导，从而提高一般亲社会行为的水平，并提高组织筹集资金以促进高等教育的能力。通过利用现有的活动，有可能积累一个大型的新数据集，这些数据集将以其他不可能的方式深入了解跨越社会科学多个领域的慈善捐赠理论。

This project consists of a field experiment on motivations for charitable giving, conducted in conjunction with the annual fund and capital giving campaign at a major public research university. The collaboration between the researchers and the university has the potential to answer important questions in three main motives for giving: prestige, reciprocity, and social norms. The experiments gauge the effect of prestige (acknowledgment) and giving categories on donations; the importance of gifts and reciprocity (gift exchange) as motives for giving; and the role of social influence and norm compliance on giving. The large sample size allows the researchers to compare the effectiveness of various fundraising techniques, alone and in combination.Approximately 300,000 former students are randomly assigned to receive different solicitation letters. These letters vary the offer of recognition from the university in response to donations as well as the levels of suggested donations in order to identify whether bunching at the bottom of categories, which has been documented in the existing literature, is due to reference points or a desire for prestige. Additionally, related treatments offer gifts in exchange for donations, as is common for charitable organizations. The mechanisms by which reciprocal gift-giving by the charity affects donative behavior is identified by varying the size of the gifts, the required donation amounts, and the opportunity to opt out of receiving the gift. Giving by donors is examined both in response to the initial solicitation and over the longer term to study persistence in philanthropy.Charitable giving plays a large role in the United States. The results of this research will provide guidance to practitioners, especially in higher education, on how to raise funds more efficiently, thus increasing both the level of prosocial behavior in general as well as enhancing the ability of organizations to raise funds to promote the provision of higher education. By leveraging an existing campaign, it is possible to accumulate a large new data set that will provide insight into theories of charitable giving that span multiple fields in social science in ways that are not otherwise possible.