Field Experiments on Charitable Giving at a Public University

公立大学慈善捐赠的现场实验

• 批准号: 1338680
• 负责人: Jonathan Meer
• 金额: $ 19.9万
• 依托单位: Texas A&M University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-08-01 至 2017-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1338680&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Field; Experiments; Charitable; Giving; Public

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.

该项目包括一项关于慈善捐赠动机的实地实验，该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从三个主要的捐赠动机来回答重要的问题：声望、互惠和社会规范。这些实验衡量了威望(感谢)和赠送类别对捐赠的影响；赠送和互惠(赠送交换)作为赠送动机的重要性；以及社会影响和规范遵守对赠送的作用。大量的样本使研究人员能够比较各种筹款方法的单独和组合的有效性。大约30万名以前的学生被随机分配到不同的募捐信中。这些信件改变了大学对捐款的认可程度，以及建议捐款的水平，以确定现有文献中记录的排名垫底是由于参考要点还是出于对声望的渴望。此外，相关治疗提供礼物以换取捐赠，这在慈善组织中很常见。慈善机构互惠赠送礼物影响捐赠行为的机制是通过改变礼物的大小、所需的捐赠金额和选择不接受礼物的机会来确定的。捐赠者的捐赠既是为了响应最初的募捐，也是为了研究慈善事业的长期坚持性。慈善捐赠在美国扮演着重要的角色。这项研究的结果将为从业者，特别是高等教育从业者提供指导，指导如何更有效地筹集资金，从而提高一般亲社会行为的水平，并增强组织筹集资金促进高等教育提供的能力。通过利用现有的活动，有可能积累大量的新数据集，这些数据集将提供对慈善捐赠理论的洞察，这些理论以其他方式不可能实现的方式跨越社会科学的多个领域。