Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/235021 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
AWI Discussion Paper Series No. 698
Publisher: 
University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics, Heidelberg
Abstract: 
Charities frequently deviate from the standard donation scheme in which potential donors are asked how much money they are willing to give. Instead, they ask donors to choose how many units of a charitable good (e.g. meals, bed nets, or trees) to fund at a given unit price. In an online donation experiment, we compare the performance of such a "unit donation" scheme with that of the standard "money donation" and investigate the factors that could explain differences. We find that despite the additional demands that it imposes on the charity, the unit donation does not outperform the money donation scheme in terms of overall donations. It significantly differs, however, with respect to the propensity to give. The sign of the difference depends on the granularity of the scheme. When one unit of the charitable good is cheap, unit donation schemes increase the propensity to give and can serve as an effective tool for recruiting donors.
Subjects: 
Charitable giving
unit donation
framing
aid effectiveness
restricted choice
JEL: 
D64
H4
L31
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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