Warm Glow Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

- by
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- Applied Economics, Public Good, Public Goods, Warm Glow
- by Elias Khalil
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- Evolutionary Biology, Social Interaction, Economic Psychology, Altruism

Attempts to understand the economic and psychological motivations for charitable giving date at least back to Adam Smith (1759). In his Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith attempts to explain why and how an individual or household will feel sympathy for other less welloff individuals or households. At the heart of Smith's analysis is the general proposition that sympathy (and presumably discernible actions based on that sympathy) is embodied in the ability of an individual to imagine, from his own perspective, the plight of the less well-off household. In this paper we posit a model of charitable giving that is predicated on this basic proposition that we believe lies at the center of explaining the pattern of charitable giving in the United States. In particular, we suggest that understanding the fundamental human and economic drivers of giving requires us to consider the nature and determinants of the ''warm glow" a household experiences when making charitable donations to other households. We borrow from cognitive psychologists' research into how people judge reward distributions and infer causality of such distributions to explain when households are more and less likely to experience this warm glow. Specifically, we explain how biased perceptions of effort and luck, as the causes of reward distributions, will systematically reduce warm glow of high-income households, which may help explain the essentially flat relationship between income and percentage donations to charity.

- by Catherine Tinsley
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- Economic Psychology, Charitable giving, Multidisciplinary, United States
- by Zeliha Oçak
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- Homo Economicus, Warm Glow, Kurumsal Sosyal Sorumluluk, Sürdürülebilirlik

Altruism is generally understood to be behavior that benefits others at a personal cost to the behaving individual. However, within evolutionary biology, different authors have interpreted the concept of altruism differently, leading to dissimilar predictions about the evolution of altruistic behavior. Generally, different interpretations diverge on which party receives the benefit from altruism and on how the cost of altruism is assessed. Using a simple trait-group framework, we delineate the assumptions underlying different interpretations and show how they relate to one another. We feel that a thorough examination of the connections between interpretations not only reveals why different authors have arrived at disparate conclusions about altruism, but also illuminates the conditions that are likely to favor the evolution of altruism.

- by Benjamin Kerr
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- Evolutionary Biology, Economic Psychology, Multidisciplinary, Biological Sciences

The paper defines altruism as charity. The second section of the paper criticizes three ratio-8 nalistic (what is called ''interactional'') theories of altruism, viz., the egoistic, egocentric, and 9 altercentric perspectives. The third section criticizes three normative (what is named ''self-ac-10 tional'') theories of altruism, viz., the Kantian, the socialization argument, and ''warm glow'' 11 story. The fourth section elaborates on three implications of altruism qua charity. First, while 12 altruism differs from self-interest, it is still within the domain of rational theory. Second, altru-13 ism should not be confused with parental care or, what is the same thing, philanthropy. Third, 14 altruism should be distinguished from honesty. 15

- by Elias Khalil
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- Evolutionary Biology, Social Interaction, Economic Psychology, Altruism

This paper suggests that advertising campaigns directed at increasing consumer demand for green energy should emphasize not only environmental concern and utilitarian benefits, but also psychological brand benefits. The theoretical framework proposes three distinct psychological benefit categories potentially enhancing consumer attitudes toward green energy brands and increasing purchase intentions: warm glow, self-expressive benefits, and nature experiences. A sample of 726 consumers was exposed to experimental advertisements for a fictitious green energy brand. Findings confirm most predicted effects and underline the overall significance of psychological brand benefits. Only self-expressive benefits do neither affect participants' attitudes toward the experimental brand nor their purchase intentions. Nature experience has the strongest influence on brand attitude. Multi-group structural analysis shows that the nature experiences level evoked by the advertisements moderates the effects of the behavioral antecedents studied on brand attitude and purchase intention. The findings provide keys to improving green energy branding and advertising strategy.

- by Izza Mardhia
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- Business, Environmental Marketing, Multidisciplinary, Environmental Concern

Concepts are holistic disciplines, which are used to define the World, its relations and reality. The emergence of new concepts depends on the changing social relations and so, new concepts are created or existing ones are innovated to define the new World. Sustainability concept, which became popular with 2000s, attracts attention in this term. Although the concept was first used in Brundtland report in 1987, it has been institutionalized with the declaration of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000, which is the framework of principles of sustainable development set by the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) is an initiative of the United Nations (UN). When the principles were first set in 2000, Kofi Annan declared them as a global transformation strategy to counter the negative consequences of globalisation. In this context, the sustainability concept has been presented as the reverse process of the globalisation especially in terms of social democracy. The UNGC was presented as a social contract and the sustainability strategies as humanisation of capitalism. However, the similarities between the sustainability and the globalisation concepts in terms of notion and action point the contradictions in context of the reliability of the commitments. In this context, the sustainability concept will be examined in terms of notion and action within the historical progress of the changing social relations. Findings will be compared with its current representation made by the UNGC. The regulatory role of the communication will be examined while tracing the question of ‘what is definition of the sustainability concept?’. At the first chapter of the research, it will be discussed whether the sustainability concept is the aesthetic expression of globalization. Second chapter will be the investigation of three pillars of sustainability concept – environment, social and governance- in terms of their hegemony building actions and discourses. The third chapter will cover an economic policy approach that discusses the functioning of UNGC sanctions and the fulfilment of sustainability commitments in the context of brands and companies that sign the UNGC. In the conclusion, the integral doctrine of the sustainability concept will be discussed.

- by Zeliha Oçak
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- Economics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Crisis Communication, Homo Economicus
- by anesis smith
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- Vintage Fashion, Warm Glow, Bright Light, Ray of Light

This paper reports the results from a contingent valuation study designed to investigate the influence of warm glow in willingness to pay (WTP) responses. Interindividual differences in warm glow motivation are measured through a factor analysis, performed on a list of attitudinal items. The reported (WTP) measures fail to pass the scope test. Both socioeconomic variables and motivational factor scores are significant in the explanation of the individual WTP measures. We compute ''cold'' WTP measures by taking out the effect of the warm glow motivation. These ''cold'' measures satisfy both the scope test and Hausman's adding-up property. r (P.A.L.D. Nunes). 1 This result is a possible indication of incoherency, but not a sufficient proof. It might also occur if the two goods are perfect substitutes and the marginal utility of additional units is zero once either of the goods is supplied, a case which cannot be qualified as an embedding problem. Moreover, the empirical evidence is mixed. Carson [4] reviews over 30 studies using splitsample tests, which all clearly reject the hypothesis that respondents are insensitive to the scope of the good being valued. 0095-0696/03/$ -see front matter r

- by Erik Schokkaert
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- Environmental Economics, Economic Theory, Applied Economics, Factor analysis

Numerous experimental studies of informational nudges both in the lab and the field have demonstrated not just that informational nudges are effective policy tools for influencing behavior, but also that nudges have hetero- geneous impacts that differ depending on the characteristics of the person involved and the situation. We adapt Andreoni’s theory of warm-glow impure altruism to account for how altruism motives respond differently depending on the disposition of the person and the situation. The model explains both positive spillovers (moral cleansing) and negative spillovers (moral licensing) for beha- vioral interventions, showing that targeting of informational campaigns depends on the complementarity between people’s traits and the intervention’s content. More importantly, the design of economic incentives (like Pigouvian taxes) to shift economic behavior should depend on both the distribution of social pre- ferences in the population and the use of behavioral interventions.

- by Benjamin Ho and +1
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- Altruism, Warm Glow, Moral Licensing, Nudge
- by Subhra Bhattacharjee
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- Panel Data, Warm Glow, Cost Benefit Analysis, Site Quality

- by Paulo A.L.D. Nunes and +1
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- Environmental Economics, Economic Theory, Applied Economics, Factor analysis

Pourquoi les gens donnent-ils? Une hypothèse influente est qu'ils cherchent à éprouver le plaisir de donner (warm glow-feeling). Mais les experts semblent s'être fait, chacun de leur côté, une idée intuitive de ce plaisir typiquement philanthropique. La disparité de leurs conceptions autorise à se demander s'ils parlent vraiment de la même chose.

- by Emma Tieffenbach
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- Charitable giving, Warm Glow, Philanthropie

A cause-related auction is different from a list price setting in two major ways: First, the donation percentage directly affects the price of the item in that consumers' value for charitable contributions enters their bids. Second, charitable consumers have a price externality on non-charitable consumers, so even a segment of consumers who place a premium on charitable contributions can significantly affect prices for everybody else. The purpose of this paper is to characterize both the charity premium and the impact of the charitable segments with a careful field design. We examine individual choice between pairs of simultaneous auctions identical in all but percentage of the proceeds donated to charity. We investigate the extent to which individuals are willing to pay a charity premium in choice between auctions of various donation percentages. We use a mixture model approach to allow for different types of individual preferences. In analysis of choices between pairs of auctions, we find that individuals fall into three segments-bargain seekers and two altruistic segments. The altruistic segments, which drive up the charity premium, can in turn be classified into warm glow bidders-who derive a pleasure from doing the right thing-and other-regarding bidders-who are sensitive to the percentage given to charity. Further analysis shows that warm glow bidders positively contribute to the charity premium in pairs of auctions that do not differ much in donation percentages, whereas the other-regarding bidders drive up the premium in pairs of auctions that differ much in donation percentages. This means that managers should focus their marketing efforts on appealing to these different segments, depending on the percentage donated to charity relative to some near substitute. Correctly identifying the charitable segments and their impact is of utmost importance in cause related marketing, and we discuss managerial implications of bidder charitable motives in auctions.

- by Peter Popkowski Leszczyc
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- Marketing, Field Experiments, Warm Glow, Field Experiment

Insensitivity to quantity in valuation appears in 3 ways: embedding (when willingness to pay for a good is smaller if assessed after a superordinate good), insensitivity to numerical quantity, and adding up (when willingness to pay for 2 goods is less than inferred from willingness to pay for each good alone). Results of 11 experiments on these effects are generally inconsistent with 3 accounts: People think of the task as a contribution, they get a warm glow from participation, and they have budget constraints on expenditures for certain goods. The results support an explanation in terms of prominence of the type of good as opposed to its quantity. In addition, 1 study supports availability of only the good evaluated rather than other goods of the same type. These findings support the critics of contingent valuation, but they suggest that some of the methods of decision analysis can improve the elicitation of economic values.

- by Joshua D. Greene
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- Psychology, Cognitive Science, Decision Analysis, Public Good

Non-market valuation approaches for estimating the social value of biodiversity and individual species need to enhance their policy relevance. The concept of service-providing unit (SPU) may help achieve this objective by promoting the systematic quantification of the key components of nature that provide services for human wellbeing. The present paper is the first application of the SPU concept in stated preference surveys. The object of valuation is the highly endangered Mediterranean monk seal (Monachus monachus). A split-sample is used testing the hypotheses that the SPU framework would: 1) minimize the part of non-use values that is due to a 'warm glow' effect and therefore 2) encourage respondents in reallocating part of their total economic value towards use values. Our results indicate that the difference between the means of existence values in the two sub-samples is statistically insignificant: in both cases respondents attribute a significant percentage of their total economic value to existence value. On the other hand though, the non-use value component of WTP decreases in the sub-sample with SPU in relation to the sub-sample without it. We conclude that existence values in our sample are based on solid preferences related to the species since they persisted in both sub-samples.

- by Gary Luck
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- Ecosystem Services, Ecological Economics, Applied Economics, Environmental Change

Charities frequently announce contributions of donors as they accrue. Doing so induces donors to play a sequential-move rather than simultaneous-move game. We examine the conditions under which a charity prefers such sequential play. It is known that if donors only value contributions through their effect on the total provision of a public good, then the charity will not announce contributions sequentially. However, with more general utility functions that include additional effects such as warm-glow or snob appeal, the charity may benefit from announcing contributions. 1 While not the focus of this paper, we provide here generalizations of Varian's analysis to the n-agent case and to the case of endogenous timing of contributions.

- by Richard Romano
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- Public Economics, Applied Economics, Public Good, Warm Glow

We test the null hypothesis that involuntary transfers for the provision of a public good will completely crowd out voluntary transfers against the warm-glow hypothesis that crowding-out will be incomplete because individuals care about giving. Our design differs from the related design used by Andreoni in considering two levels of the involuntary transfer and a wider range of contribution possibilities, and in mixing groups every period instead of every four periods. We analyse the data with careful attention to boundary effects. We retain the null hypothesis of complete crowding-out in two of three pairwise comparisions, but reject it in favour of incomplete crowding-out in the comparison most closely akin to Andreoni’s design. Thus we confirm the existence of incomplete crowding-out in some environments, but suggest that the warm-glow hypothesis is inadequate in explaining it.

- by Rob Godby
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- Economics, Applied Economics, Public Good, Public Goods

Standardized methods are required to measure ecosystem services in order to value them. In this paper, we argue that the service-providing unit (SPU) concept may help achieve this objective by promoting the systematic quantification of the key components of nature that provide services (e.g., population density of a key pollinator) and linking these with measurable outcomes for human well-being. We discuss and provide examples of the potential role of the SPU concept in improving economic valuation of ecosystem services. Further, we suggest the concept may contribute to addressing the endpoint problem, which can be defined simply as the inability of researchers to communicate the implications of environmental change in a way that is understood by a broad cross-section of society. The endpoint problem is of particular relevance to stated preference approaches, and we discuss the capacity of the SPU concept to refine these approaches. We argue that the concept enhances interdisciplinary collaboration, promoting more validated, well-informed valuation applications. It also has the potential to minimize ‘warm glow effects’ and put the notion of marginal changes in the provision of ecosystem services in a new light.

In recent years, firms have greatly increased the amount of resources allocated to activities classified as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). While an increase in CSR expenditure may be consistent with firm value maximization if it is a response to changes in stakeholders’ preferences, we argue that a firm’s insiders (managers and large blockholders) may seek to over- invest in CSR for their private benefit to the extent that doing so improves their reputations as good global citizens and has a “warm-glow” effect. We test this hypothesis by investigating the relation between firms’ CSR ratings and their ownership and capital structures. Employing a unique data set that categorizes the largest 3000 U.S. corporations as either socially responsible (SR) or socially irresponsible (SI), we find that on average, insiders’ ownership and leverage are negatively related to the firm’s social rating, while institutional ownership is uncorrelated with it. Assuming that higher CSR ratings is associated with higher CSR expenditure level, these results support our hypothesis that insiders induce firms to over-invest in CSR when they bear little of the cost of doing so.

- by Amir Amir
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- Marketing, Business Ethics, Applied Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility

This paper presents evidence from a field experiment, which aims to identify the two sources of workers' pro-social motivation that have been considered in the literature: warm glow altruism and pure altruism. We employ an experimental design that first measures the level of effort exerted by student workers on a data entry task in an environment that elicits purely selfish behavior and we compare it to effort exerted in an environment that also induces warm glow altruism. We then compare the latter to effort exerted in an environment where both types of altruistic preferences are elicited. We find evidence that women increase effort due to warm glow altruism while we do not find any additional impact due to pure altruism. On the other hand, men in our sample are not responsive to any of the treatments.

- by Mirco Tonin
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- Altruism, Warm Glow, Pure altruism, Real effort

Champ et al. [ J. Enriron. Management 33, 151-162 (199711 claim that they have (a) explored the welfare implication of warm glow for Hicksian measures of value for public goods arid (b) established that actual doriatioris place a "theoretical lower bound" on such values. We extend their model to show that warm glow introduces non-neutrality between the value of the good under public arid private provision. The resulting ]implication of rioninvariance of the benefit measure within benefit-cost analysis is highlighted. We further demonstrate that, in an important area of application, the hypothesis of Charrip et al. that donations place a lower bound on Hicksian values may be invalidated. o 1999 Acaderriic Press I NTRODU CTl ON The donation mechanism outlined in Champ et al. [5] conforms in many respects to Andreoni's model [l, 21 of a privately provided public good. Central to both models is the assumption that the sum of individuals' actual donations, gi, forms the total supply of the good, G where: n G = C g i. i= 1 In both cases, individual i takes donations by everyone else (G-j) as exogenously determined and sets an optimal donation in response to this, such that G = G P i + gi. *We thank Richard Bishop for his support throughout the writing of this paper. Thanks are also due to Michael Jones-Lee for corrirrierits or1 an earlier draft, to the referees, arid to James Andreorii for an enlightening discussion on warm glow. Any errors or omissions remain the responsibility of the authors. 'No seniority of authorship allocated.

- by Susan Chilton
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- Environmental Economics, Economic Theory, Applied Economics, Public Good

People often prefer familiar stimuli, presumably because familiarity signals safety. This preference can occur with merely repeated old stimuli, but it is most robust with new but highly familiar prototypes of a known category (beauty-in-averageness effect). However, is familiarity always warm? Tuning accounts of mood hold that positive mood signals a safe environment, whereas negative mood signals an unsafe environment. Thus, the value of familiarity should depend on mood. We show that compared with a sad mood, a happy mood eliminates the preference for familiar stimuli, as shown in measures of self-reported liking and physiological measures of affect (electromyographic indicator of spontaneous smiling). The basic effect of exposure on preference and its modulation by mood were most robust for prototypes (category averages). All this occurs even though prototypes might be more familiar in a happy mood. We conclude that mood changes the hedonic implications of familiarity cues.

- by Piotr Winkielman
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- Psychology, Cognitive Science, Emotional Memory, Smiling

Downloadable! The paper focuses on the ongoing debate on non-market valuation, including the valuation environmental goods, and the opportunity to use contingent valuation for policy guidance. In fact, contingent valuation critics argue... more

- by Paulo Nunes
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- Contingent valuation, Warm Glow, Working Papers, Willingness to Pay

This paper looks at an institutional innovation in which Western investors lend peer-topeer to poor country enterprises. Using a unique dataset from an online lending platform called MyC4, we find that MyC4's Western lenders grant lower interest rates to pro-poor, socially responsible (SR), and pro-female African projects, thus internalizing positive externalities. Using novel instrumental variables to account for interest rates' endogeneity, we find that these lower interest rates substantially improve the repayment performance of borrowers, and do not reflect profit-maximizing behavior. This new way to organize finance improves credit market efficiency and the success rate of poor country enterprises.

This paper tries to bridge part of the gap between the theoretical model of mixed altruism and the empirical research on charitable behaviour. We use questionnaire data on charitable donations from a representative sample of the Flemish population. We link interindividual differences in behaviour to the answers on direct motivational questions. The results are in line with the theoretical predictions. Respondents who are more sensitive to warm glow considerations donate more. A stronger preference for the public good does not lead to a higher level of private giving. This can be seen as weak evidence for the crowding out-effect. Tax prices have no significant effect. This has mainly to do with lack of information and limited tax awareness.

- by Luc Van Ootegem
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- Public Good, Warm Glow, Empirical Research, Crowding Out
- by William Harbaugh
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- Public Economics, Altruism, Applied Economics, Public Goods

This paper estimates the correlation between the generosity of parents and the generosity of their adult children using regression models of adult children's charitable giving. New charitable giving data are collected in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and used to estimate the regression models. The regression models are estimated using a wide variety of techniques and specification tests, and the strength of the intergenerational giving correlations are compared with intergenerational correlations in income, wealth, and consumption expenditure from the same sample using the same set of controls. We find the religious giving of parents and children to be strongly correlated, as strongly correlated as are their income and wealth. The correlation in the secular giving (e.g., giving to the United Way, educational institutions, for poverty relief) of parents and children is smaller, similar in magnitude to the intergenerational correlation in consumption. Parents' religious giving is positively associated with children's secular giving, but in a more limited sense. Overall, the results are consistent with generosity emerging at least in part from the influence of parental charitable behavior. In contrast to intergenerational models in which parental generosity towards their children can undo government transfer policy (Ricardian equivalence), these results suggest that parental generosity towards charitable organizations might reinforce government policies, such as tax incentives aimed at encouraging voluntary transfers.

- by Mark Ottoni-Wilhelm
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- Public Economics, Charitable giving, Applied Economics, Public Good

This Discussion Paper is issued under the auspices of the Centre's research programme in PUBLIC POLICY. Any opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and not those of the Centre for Economic Policy Research. Research... more

- by Haydée Lugo and +1
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- Public Good, Warm Glow

Warm glow" has been proposed as an explanation for public good contributions that exceed traditional theoretical predictions, yet little is known about why and when people exhibit warm glow in some voluntary settings. To investigate these issues, this research develops a model for the ``helping hand" hypothesis as an extension of warm glow. The hypothesis asserts that when an external environment faced by the subject seems not to provide a socially optimal level of the public good (non-incentive compatible), the subject, to some degree, gains utility by undertaking socially responsible behavior (offering a helping hand), and thus she over-contributes. Once the mechanism is established to be incentive compatible, the individual no longer offers a helping hand, but instead concentrates on maximizing her personal payoffs as predicted by the Nash equilibrium. Experimental results support the helping hand hypothesis, and show that contributions depend on the efficiency of the mechanism and not whether it is voluntary. We also find that contributions are positively correlated with an induced value of the public good even when free-riding is a dominant strategy in an non-incentive compatible mechanism. This would suggest that people's social preferences depend on an induced value of the public good and possess an efficiency concern.

- by Kent Messer
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- Public Good, Socially-responsible Investing, Warm Glow, Social Preferences

We use data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) to explain the amount of time invested in volunteering in eight European countries. Direct information on motivations adds to the explanation over and above the effect of sociodemographic variables. The results for specific motivations are in line with the predictions from rational choice theory. While larger levels of 'warm glow' and 'instrumental' motivations lead to more frequent volunteering, the influence of the 'public good' motivation on volunteering frequency is found to be negligible.

- by Erik Schokkaert
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- Rational Choice Theory, Public Good, Warm Glow

- by Erik Schokkaert
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- Public Good, Warm Glow, Empirical Research, Crowding Out

- by Paulo A.L.D. Nunes
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- Contingent valuation, Warm Glow, Working Papers, Willingness to Pay

This paper focus on a contingent valuation application as to measure the value that the Portuguese households are willing to pay for the recreation and biodiversity benefits provided by a Natural Park in Portugal. A national survey was designed and implemented. It gathered 1678 respondents and focus on three tourism development policy options for the Park. We refer to (1) the Wilderness-Area commercial tourism development scenario; (2) the Recreational-Area commercial tourism development scenario and, finally, a scenario version which is characterized by the tourism development of both Wilderness and Recreational Areas of the Natural Park. The results show that the Portuguese evaluate the Wilderness-Area and the Recreational-Area differently. In particular, the Portuguese show a higher willingness to pay for preserving the Wilderness-Area free from any commercial tourism development. However, we find no statistical difference between the willingness to pay for the Wilderness-Area and the willingness to pay for the Wilderness-Area jointly with the Recreational-Area. The last result can be interpreted as a consequence of the lack of credibility of the protection scenarios or, more interestingly, as pointing to the eventual presence of warm glow in the stated willingness to pay responses.

- by Paulo A.L.D. Nunes
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- Economics, Tourism Development, Contingent valuation, Warm Glow

We design an experiment to test whether the behavior of dictators can be rationalized by the utility function that includes both altruistic and warm glow effects (impure altruism). By giving the recipients an endowment of varying levels, we create an environment that allows for observable differences in behavior depending upon whether warm glow or altruism is the primary motivation. We find that the behavior of 89% of the dictators can be rationalized by the utility function that includes both altruistic and warm glow effects while only 16% of the dictators made choices that are consistent with the utility function that excludes the warm glow effects.

- by Edward Millner
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- Warm Glow, DICTATOR GAME, Revealed Preference, UTILITY FUNCTION

There is no consensus yet on the correct way to write the social utility function in presence of paternalistic altruism. This note shows that the speci cation of the central planner objective is crucial for optimal capital intensity and optimal growth in a one and a two-sector models. In a one-sector model, optimal growth depends on preferences when paternalistic altruism enters the social utility function; otherwise it does only depend on the capital share as in the standard golden rule. In a two-sector model, optimal growth depends on preferences and relative capital intensities when paternalistic altruism enters the social utility function; otherwise it does only depend on the capital share of the investment good sector. Moreover, both in a one and a two sector model, the optimal growth rate tends to be higher when warm-glow altruism enters the social utility function.

- by Karine Gente
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- Warm Glow, Optimal Growth, UTILITY FUNCTION
- by David Reinstein
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- Charitable giving, Panel Data, Public Good, Warm Glow

Evidence suggests that donors have little demand for information before giving to charity. To understand this behavior and its policy implications, we present a model in which each individual can acquire costly information about her true value of charity. We observe that an individual who considers giving less is less likely to become informed; and indeed, an uninformed donor is, on average, less generous than an informed one. This implies that since the free-rider problem in giving worsens in a larger population, the percentage of informed givers becomes vanishingly small, leaving the total expected donations strictly below its highest level to be reached by a fully informed population. We show that while a direct government grant to the charity causes severe crowding-out by discouraging information acquisition, a matching grant increases donations by encouraging it. We further show that a "warm-glow" motive for giving does not necessarily weaken incentives to be informed, and that a (firstorder) stochastic increase in true values for charity may actually decrease donations.

- by huseyin yildirim
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- Public Economics, Charitable giving, Applied Economics, Warm Glow

- by Mark Starr
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- Psychology, Cognitive Science, Emotional Memory, Smiling

- by Erik Schokkaert
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- Rational Choice Theory, Public Good, Warm Glow

Matching grants are a prevalent mechanism for funding environmental, conservation, and natural resource projects. However, economists have largely been silent regarding the potential benefits of these mechanisms at increasing voluntary contributions. To examine the behavioral responses to different match levels, this research uses controlled laboratory experiments with generically framed instructions and introduces a general-form matching-grant mechanism, referred to as the proportional contribution mechanism (PCM). Results show that contributions are positively correlated with both the match and the induced value of the public good even when a dominant strategy is free-riding. An implication of this partial demand revelation result is that manifestations of this type of â€œhelping handâ€ social preference should be counted in benefit-cost analysis.

- by Kent Messer
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- Experimental Economics, Charitable giving, Applied Economics, Public Good

The paper defines altruism as charity. The second section of the paper criticizes three rationalistic (what is called “interactional”) theories of altruism, viz., the egoistic, egocentric, and altercentric perspectives. The third section criticizes three normative (what is named “self-actional”) theories of altruism, viz., the Kantian, the socialization argument, and “warm glow” story. The fourth section elaborates on three implications of

- by Marcus Feldman
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- Economic Psychology, Multidisciplinary, Parental care, Warm Glow

While it is spoken of quite often in our society, as yet no psychological research has undertaken to investigate the phenomenon of &dquo;basking in reflected glory&dquo;. It is a common and understandable tendency among people who have been successful.in some way to want to make others aware of their connection with their accomplishment. The &dquo;basking in reflected glory&dquo; phenomenon would seem to work somewhat differently. Here, the tendency appears to be to make others aware of one's connection with a successful or highly positive other person or group of persons.

- by sanford braver
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- Psychology, Cognitive Science, Football, Warm Glow