TY  - JOUR
AU  - Karlan,Dean
AU  - List,John A.
TI  - Does Price Matter in Charitable Giving? Evidence From a Large-Scale Natural Field Experiment
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 12338
PY  - 2006
Y2  - June 2006
DO  - 10.3386/w12338
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12338
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12338.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Dean Karlan
Department of Economics
Yale University
P.O. Box 208269
New Haven, CT 06520-8629
Tel: 203/432-4479
Fax: 203/432-5591
E-Mail: dean.karlan@yale.edu

John A. List
Department of Economics
University of Chicago
1126 East 59th
Chicago, IL 60637
Tel: 301/405-1288
Fax: 301/314-9091
E-Mail: jlist@uchicago.edu
AB  - We conducted a natural field experiment to explore the effect of price changes on charitable contributions. To operationalize our tests, we examine whether an offer to match contributions to a non-profit organization changes the likelihood and amount that an individual donates. Direct mail solicitations were sent to over 50,000 prior donors. We find that the match offer increases both the revenue per solicitation and the probability that an individual donates. While comparisons of the match treatments and the control group consistently reveal this pattern, larger match ratios (i.e., $3:$1 and $2:$1) relative to smaller match ratios ($1:$1) had no additional impact. The results have clear implications for practitioners in the design of fundraising campaigns and provide avenues for future empirical and theoretical work on charitable giving. Further, the data provide an interesting test of important methods used in cost-benefit analysis.
ER  -