On Reminder Effects, Drop-Outs and Dominance: Evidence from an Online Experiment on Charitable Giving

Axel Sonntag and Daniel Zizzo

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: We present the results of an experiment that (a) shows the usefulness of screening out drop-outs and (b) tests whether different methods of payment and reminder intervals affect charitable giving. Following a lab session, participants could make online donations to charity for a total duration of three months. Our procedure justifying the exclusion of drop-outs consists in requiring participants to collect payments in person flexibly and as known in advance and as highlighted to them later. Our interpretation is that participants who failed to collect their positive payments under these circumstances are likely not to satisfy dominance. If we restrict the sample to subjects who did not drop out, but not otherwise, reminders significantly increase the overall amount of charitable giving. We also find that weekly reminders are no more effective than monthly reminders in increasing charitable giving, and that, in our three months duration experiment, standing orders do not increase giving relative to one-off donations.

Keywords: drop-outs; methodology; charitable giving; payment method; reminders; nudges; dominance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D64 L31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-03-13, Revised 2015-07-14
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe and nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

Published in PLOS ONE 8.10(2015): pp. 1-17

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/68478/1/MPRA_paper_68478.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: On Reminder Effects, Drop-Outs and Dominance: Evidence from an Online Experiment on Charitable Giving (2015)
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:pra:mprapa:68478

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().