Charitable donations decision-making research
How can we increase the good people choose to do with their donations?
This profile is tailored towards students studying economics, media and communications and psychology, however we expect there to be valuable open research questions that could be pursued by students in other disciplines.
Why is this a pressing problem?
The amount of money donated to charitable causes in the US alone was over $484 billion in 2021, with the largest proportion of that amount donated by individuals. There is a reason to believe that differences in the effectiveness of various charitable interventions are vast. However, donors rarely decide where to donate based on how effective their donations will be, and research suggests most donors significantly underestimate the differences in how effective different charities are.
Most research done in this area is focused on increasing the amount donated, however it seems plausible that more research on increasing the effectiveness of donations would create a greater positive impact. Further research to identify interventions that create desirable behavioural change would likely be more valuable than descriptive research (i.e. how donors behave).
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Research papers
Andreoni, James (1990) Impure Altruism and Donations to Public Goods: A Theory of Warm-Glow Giving, The Economic Journal
Bekkers, René & Pamala Wiepking (2011) A Literature Review of Empirical Studies of Philanthropy: Eight Mechanisms that Drive Charitable Giving, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly
Bergh, Robin & David Reinstein (2019) Empathic and Numerate Giving: The Joint Effects of Victim Images and Charity Evaluations
Berman, Jonathan Z., et al. (2018) Impediments to Effective Altruism: The Role of Subjective Preferences in Charitable Giving, Psychological Science
Caviola, Lucius, Stefan Schubert, & Joshua D. Green (2021) The Psychology of (In)Effective Altruism, Trends in Cognitive Sciences
Costa-Gomes, Miguel & Philipp Schoenegger (2022) Sure-Thing vs. Probabilistic Charitable Giving: Experimental Evidence on the Role of Individual Differences in Risky and Ambiguous Charitable Decision-Making, PLoS ONE
Gneezy, Uri, et al. (2014) Avoiding Overhead Aversion in Charity, Science
Grodeck, Ben & Philipp Schoenegger (2022) Demanding the Morally Demanding: Experimental Evidence on the Effects of Moral Arguments and Moral Demandingness on Charitable Giving
Karlan, Dean & Daniel H. Wood (2014) The Effect of Effectiveness: Donor Response to Aid Effectiveness in a Direct Mail Fundraising Experiment
Kessler, Judd B., Katherine L. Milkman, & C. Yiwei Zhang (2019) Getting the Rich and Powerful to Give, Management Science
Nemirow, Jason, et al. (2020) The Many Obstacles to Effective Giving, Judgment and Decision Making
Schroeder, Juliana, et al. (2017) Endorsing Help for Others That You Oppose for Yourself: Mind Perception Alters the Perceived Effectiveness of Paternalism, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
Small, Deborah E. & George Loewenstein (2003) Helping a Victim or Helping the Victim: Altruism and Identifiability, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty
Toure-Tillery, Maferima & Ayelet Fishbach, Too Far to Help: The Effect of Perceived Distance on the Expected Impact and Likelihood of Charitable Action, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Wiepking, Pamala & René Bekkers (2012) Who Gives? A Literature Review of Predictors of Charitable Giving. Part Two: Gender, Family Composition and Income, Voluntary Sector Review
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Newsletters
The Effective Altruism Behavioral Science Newsletter shares papers, research opportunities, events and calls for collaborators.
Contributors: This profile was last updated 31/12/2022. Thanks to Samantha Kassirer, Philipp Schoenegger, David Reinstein and Izzy Gainsburg for helpful feedback. All errors remain our own. Learn more about how we create our profiles.
