Subsidizing Charitable Giving with Rebates or Matching: Further Laboratory Evidence Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • We examine two different ways to subsidize charitable giving: by a rebate (returning a portion of the donation to the giver) or by a match (adding additional donations to the giver's donation). In previous experimental research, we have shown that participants give more to charity under the match than under an equivalent rebate. The previous withinsubject experimental design required participants to make a series of decisions under both types of subsidy. Each decision consisted of an allocation of an endowment between the subject and a charity chosen by the subject from a specified list. This article examines whether that result is an artifact of the previous withinsubjects design: subjects may have failed to fully distinguish the two types of subsidy. In the current article, we report results from a betweensubjects design, where participants are required to make only one type of decisioninvolving rebates or involving matching subsidies. Our results confirm previous findings.

published proceedings

  • Southern Economic Journal

author list (cited authors)

  • Eckel, C. C., & Grossman, P. J.

citation count

  • 32

complete list of authors

  • Eckel, Catherine C||Grossman, Philip J

publication date

  • April 2006

publisher