Impact Matters for Giving at Checkout

Susan Athey, Matias Cerosimo, Dean Karlan, Kristine Koutout and Henrike Steimer

No 21182, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: We conducted two experiments on PayPal’s Give at Checkout feature to learn about the effect of 1) information about charity outcomes on donations, and 2) exposure to these point-of-sale microgiving requests on subsequent giving. In this “impulsive†giving context, quantifying the charity’s outcome generates positive treatment effects, larger than those for a narrative. Third-party validation can decrease giving when added to the quantified outcome treatment, and has at most small effects relative to no information. The second experiment finds neither crowd-in (e.g., via habit formation) nor crowd-out (e.g., via budgeting) from these microgiving requests on later donation behavior.

Date: 2026-02
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