The Effect of Neighbourhood Diversity on Volunteering: Evidence from New Zealand

Jeremy Clark and Bonggeun Kim ()

Working Papers in Economics from University of Canterbury, Department of Economics and Finance

Abstract: An empirical literature has found that neighborhood heterogeneity lowers people's likelihood of contributing to public goods. We show that the estimated effect of any concave neighborhood characteristic on behavior may be biased when “large” rather than “small” neighborhoods are used. Large boundaries omit the effect of differences between small neighborhoods, biasing a characteristic's total effect even when the omitted differences lack economic effect. We next use three New Zealand census rounds to test whether volunteering rates are lowered by neighborhood heterogeneity by race/ethnicity, birthplace, income or language. We find boundaries matter, with only ethnic/racial heterogeneity robustly associated with lower volunteering.

Keywords: heterogeneity; neighbourhood effects; volunteering (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D13 D64 H31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47 pages
Date: 2009-05-14
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab, nep-ltv, nep-mig, nep-soc and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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https://repec.canterbury.ac.nz/cbt/econwp/0909.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Effect of Neighborhood Diversity on Volunteering: Evidence From New Zealand (2012)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cbt:econwp:09/09

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