TY  - JOUR
AU  - Andreoni,James
AU  - Rao,Justin M.
AU  - Trachtman,Hannah
TI  - Avoiding The Ask: A Field Experiment on Altruism, Empathy, and Charitable Giving
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 17648
PY  - 2011
Y2  - December 2011
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17648
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17648.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
James Andreoni
Department of Economics
University of California, San Diego
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla, CA 92093-0508
Tel: 858/534-3832
Fax: 858/534-7040
E-Mail: andreoni@ucsd.edu

Justin Rao
Microsoft Research New York City
E-Mail: justinra@microsoft.com

Hannah Trachtman
Innovations for Poverty Action
1731 Connecticut Ave
Washington, DC 20009
E-Mail: htrachtm@gmail.com
AB  - What triggers giving? We explore this in a randomized natural field experiment during the Salvation Army's annual campaign. Solicitors were at one or both of two main entrances to a supermarket, making the solicitation either easy or difficult to avoid. Additionally, solicitors were either silent, or asked "please give" to passersby. We observed over 17,000 passings over four days, and found dramatic avoidance of the solicitors, but only during a direct ask. Furthermore, asking increased donations 75%. Across all conditions, seeking the solicitor was exceedingly rare. The results do not support static views of altruism, such as inequity aversion, and instead highlight the importance of social cues and psychological features of the giver-receiver interaction. We argue that avoidance could evidence a lack of altruism or self-control strategy to deal with empathic reflexes to give.
ER  -