Jackpot for Good: Can Lottery Matches Increase Charitable Giving?

Amelia Ahles, Joanna Lahey and Marco Palma ()

No 34022, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Can lottery matching gifts accruing to the charity (instead of raffles benefiting the donors) increase charitable donations? We recruit 1,402 online participants to donate to hunger-related charities from a 10-token endowment under different matching conditions. We confirm earlier results that a 1:1 match increases giving over no match, and a 2:1 match does not. But, a lottery match to the charity with a 1% chance of 100 tokens works equally well as a 1:1 match, and, importantly, a 0.5% chance of 100 tokens match also works equally well, allowing for matching funds to go twice as far.

JEL-codes: C90 D64 H41 L3 L30 L31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-07
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