(Un)Informed charitable giving Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • Evidence suggests little informed giving. To understand this behavior, we examine voluntary provision of a discrete public good with independent private values that can be ascertained at a cost. We find that an individual who considers a smaller contribution is less likely to learn her value, and thus the percentage of informed giving diminishes as the population grows. We also find that a direct grant to the charity exacerbates crowding-out by discouraging information acquisition whereas a matching grant increases donations by encouraging it. We further show that with costly information, a (first-order) stochastic increase in values can decrease donations; and that facilitating private acquisition of information can be a better fund-raising strategy than directly supplying it. 2013 Elsevier B.V.

published proceedings

  • JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS

altmetric score

  • 4

author list (cited authors)

  • Krasteva, S., & Yildirim, H.

citation count

  • 31

complete list of authors

  • Krasteva, Silvana||Yildirim, Huseyin

publication date

  • October 2013