Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/145033 
Year of Publication: 
2016
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 5998
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
This paper studies how imposing norms on contribution behavior affects individuals’ intrinsic motivation. We consider the church levy, which the Catholic Church in Germany collects as a charitable donation, despite the fact that the levy is legally a tax. We design a randomized field experiment with treatments informing individuals that the levy is a tax. We demonstrate that treatment effects differ across motivational types. Among weakly intrinsically motivated individuals, communicating the legal norm results in a significant crowd-out of intrinsic motivation. In contrast, strongly intrinsically motivated individuals do not show any treatment response.
Subjects: 
intrinsic motivation
crowding out
charitable giving
norms
taxes
public goods
randomized field experiment
JEL: 
C93
D03
H26
H41
Document Type: 
Working Paper
Appears in Collections:

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.