Examining Donor Preference for Charity Religious Affiliation

Jonathan Oxley ()
Additional contact information
Jonathan Oxley: Department of Economics, Florida State University

Working Papers from Department of Economics, Florida State University

Abstract: In the United States, most charitable donations go to religiously affiliated organizations, yet the impact of a charity’s affiliation on donor behavior is currently unclear. To better understand this impact, I use a laboratory experiment to explore how a charity’s religious affiliation drives donor behavior. In doing so, I contribute to the understanding of how charity affiliations impact donor decisions. In the experiment, subjects select one charity from a list of eight, with each charity varying in religious affiliation. Masked and unmasked sessions differ in the inclusion of religious affiliation from half the charities, with masked sessions omitting religious affiliation of the charities. I find that adding religious language decreases donation frequency for Christian charities competing against other religious charities. Furthermore, adding religious language increases the average donation size for secular charities competing against Christian charities, but decreases average donations for Christian charities competing against other religious charities. Subjects prefer charity religious affiliation to match their own religious identity; however, subject strength of religiosity is more predictive in charity choice than religious affiliation.

Keywords: Religious Affiliation; Charitable Giving; Laboratory Experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D20 L30 Z12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 54
Date: 2020-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-isf
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://coss.fsu.edu/econpapers/wpaper/wp2020_01_01.pdf Revised version, 2020-10 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fsu:wpaper:wp2020_01_01

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Department of Economics, Florida State University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Luke Rodgers ().