Why Do People Give? Testing Pure and Impure Altruism

Mark Ottoni-Wilhelm, Lise Vesterlund and Huan Xie

American Economic Review, 2017, vol. 107, issue 11, 3617-33

Abstract: Researchers measure crowd-out around one level of charity output to identify whether giving is motivated by altruism and/or warm-glow. However, crowd-out depends on output, implying first that the power to reject pure altruism varies, and second that a single measurement of incomplete crowd-out can be rationalized by many different preferences. By instead measuring crowd-out at different output levels, we allow both for identification and for a novel and direct test of impure altruism. Using a new experimental design, we present the first empirical evidence that, consistent with impure altruism, crowd-out decreases with output.

JEL-codes: D64 L31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.20141222
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (80)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20141222 (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrie ... xiK9xE1he65B96pkRTbz (application/zip)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrie ... 2exvknPvI5BF0FBu_ClT (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrie ... bq-SD6gOTqjonJfyum_r (application/zip)

Related works:
Working Paper: Why Do People Give? Testing Pure and Impure Altruism (2014)
Working Paper: Why Do People Give? Testing Pure and Impure Altruism (2014)
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:aea:aecrev:v:107:y:2017:i:11:p:3617-33

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Review is currently edited by Esther Duflo

More articles in American Economic Review from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().