 The effect of effectiveness: Donor response to aid effectiveness in a direct mail fundraising experimentDean Karlan and Daniel Wood No 166682, Center Discussion Papers from Yale University, Economic Growth Center Abstract: We test how donors respond to new information about a charity’s effectiveness. Freedom from Hunger implemented a test of its direct marketing solicitations, varying letters by whether they include a discussion of their program’s impact as measured by scientific research. The base script, used for both treatment and control, included a standard qualitative story about an individual beneficiary. Adding scientific impact information has no effect on average likelihood of giving or average gift amount. However, we find important heterogeneity: large prior donors both are more likely to give and also give more, whereas small prior donors are less likely to give. This pattern is consistent with two different types of donors: warm glow donors who respond negatively to analytical effectiveness information, and altruism donors who respond positively to such information. Keywords: Consumer/Household Economics; International Development; Marketing; Public Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:yaleeg:166682 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Center Discussion Papers from Yale University, Economic Growth Center Contact information at EDIRC. |
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