Private provision of public goods by environmental groups

Laura Grant and Christian Langpap
Additional contact information
Christian Langpap: Department of Applied Economics, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2019, vol. 116, issue 12, 5334-5340

Abstract: Many environmental nonprofit groups are assumed to provide public goods. While an extensive literature examines why donors join and give to nonprofits, none directly tests whether donations actually provide public goods. We seek such a test by using a common form of environmental organization: watershed groups. We find their increased presence resulted in lower dissolved oxygen deficiency and higher proportions of swimmable and fishable water bodies. Increased donations to and expenditures by the groups also improved water quality. Thus, private groups likely played a role in mitigating environmental problems. Overall, our results indicate private provision of a public good by nonprofit organizations.

Keywords: environmental groups; nonprofits; private provision; public goods; water quality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.pnas.org/content/116/12/5334.full (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:nas:journl:v:116:y:2019:p:5334-5340

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Bibliographic data for series maintained by PNAS Product Team ().