Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/287485 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Citation: 
[Journal:] Experimental Economics [ISSN:] 1573-6938 [Volume:] 25 [Issue:] 2 [Publisher:] Springer US [Place:] New York, NY [Year:] 2021 [Pages:] 734-758
Publisher: 
Springer US, New York, NY
Abstract: 
An influential result in the literature on charitable giving is that matching subsidies dominate rebate subsidies in raising funds. We investigate whether this result extends to "unit donation" schemes, a popular alternative form of soliciting donations. There, the donors' choices are over the number of units of a charitable good to fund at a given unit price, rather than the amount of money to give. Comparing matches and rebates as well as simple discounts on the unit price, we find no evidence of dominance in our online experiment: the three subsidy types are equally effective overall. At a more disaggregated level, rebates lead to a higher likelihood of giving, while matching and discount subsidies lead to larger donations by donors. This suggests that charities using a unit donation scheme enjoy additional degrees of freedom in choosing a subsidy type. Rebates merit additional consideration if the primary goal is to attract donors.
Subjects: 
Charitable giving
Unit donation
Subsidies
Online field experiment
Framing
JEL: 
C93
D12
D64
H24
H41
L31
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Article
Document Version: 
Published Version

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