Inefficient but Effective? A field experiment on the effectiveness of direct and indirect transfer mechanisms

Hannes Koppel and Günther Schulze

No 200802, MAGKS Papers on Economics from Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung)

Abstract: We conduct a field experiment on direct and indirect transfer mechanisms. It shows that people are willing to donate significantly more if the donation is indirect, i.e., it is tied to the purchase of a good with a price premium, rather than made directly. This points to an efficiency–effectiveness trade–off: even though indirect donations are less efficient than direct donations, they are more effective in mobilizing resources. Our findings hold for ‘Fair Trade’ coffee as well as for ‘normal’ coffee. However, the strength of the efficiency–effectiveness trade–off is higher in the case of ‘Fair Trade’.

Keywords: Tied transfers; donations; charity; efficiency versus effectiveness; ‘fair trade’ (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D63 D64 H21 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21 pages
Date: 2008
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.uni-marburg.de/en/fb02/research-groups ... s/02-2008_koppel.pdf First version, 2008 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Inefficient but effective? A field experiment on the effectiveness of direct and indirect transfer mechanisms (2008)
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:mar:magkse:200802

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MAGKS Papers on Economics from Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bernd Hayo ().