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 Northwestern University Room 4441 Global Hub 2211 Campus Drive Evanston, IL 60208 E-Mail: dean.karlan@gmail.com 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 -