Donating behavior: if time is money, which to give? A preliminary analysis

Femida Handy and Eliakim Katz

Journal of Economic Studies, 2008, vol. 35, issue 4, 323-332

Abstract: Purpose - There appears to be a puzzle associated with the observation that individuals both donate and volunteer to charity. If the purpose of a giving individual is to maximize the effect of his/her donation, then he/she should give as effectively as possible. This implies that an individual should donate either time or money but not both. Yet, simultaneous volunteering and donating money is extremely common. Indeed, it may be viewed as the rule rather than the exception. This paper aims to offer a solution to this puzzle. Design/methodology/approach - This theoretical paper models giving behavior by individuals and takes into account the disutility of volunteer and income related work. Findings - By modeling the difference between an individual's volunteer and income‐related work, it can be understood why individuals' giving behavior of donating money and volunteering. Research limitations/implications - Future research should test these findings empirically. Originality/value - Theoretical contribution to our understanding of giving behavior as to why individuals donate money and time even if is not economically efficient to do both.

Keywords: Charitable donations; Individual behaviour (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

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:eme:jespps:v:35:y:2008:i:4:p:323-332

DOI: 10.1108/01443580810895617

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Studies is currently edited by Prof Mohsen Bahmani-Oskooee

More articles in Journal of Economic Studies from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().