The Shape of Warm Glow: Field Experimental Evidence from a Fundraiser

Jeffrey Carpenter

No 11760, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Theory commonly posits agents who care both for the level of provision of a public good and the extent to which they personally contribute to the cause. Simply put, agents feel some "warm glow" from the donations they make. I discuss a fundraiser devised to exogenously vary the incentive to give and identify the structural parameters of warm glow. Estimates suggest that for participants claiming warm glow as their primary motivation, its shape is increasing and concave. Nevertheless, welfare analysis suggests that warm glow is unlikely to be the only important factor in the decision to give.

Keywords: field experiment; fundraising; pari mutuel lottery; philanthropy; structural estimate; warm glow; altruism; public good; survey validation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D03 D64 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2018-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published - published in: Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2021, 191, 555-574

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp11760.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The shape of warm glow: Field experimental evidence from a fundraiser (2021)
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:iza:izadps:dp11760

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().