Peer Effects in Charitable Giving: Evidence from the (Running) Field | Zendy

Smith Sarah | Zendy; Windmeijer Frank | Zendy; Wright Edmund | Zendy

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Peer Effects in Charitable Giving: Evidence from the (Running) Field

Author(s) -

Smith Sarah,

Windmeijer Frank,

Wright Edmund

Publication year - 2015

Publication title -

the economic journal

Language(s) - English

Resource type - Journals

SCImago Journal Rank - 4.683

H-Index - 160

eISSN - 1468-0297

pISSN - 0013-0133

DOI - 10.1111/ecoj.12114

Subject(s) - peer effects , quality (philosophy) , set (abstract data type) , economics , social psychology , public economics , psychology , computer science , philosophy , epistemology , programming language

There is a widespread belief that peer effects are important in charitable giving but little evidence on how donors respond to their peers. Analysing a unique data set of donations to online fund‐raising pages, we find positive and sizeable peer effects: a £10 increase in the mean of past donations increases giving by £2.50, on average. Donations respond to both very large and very small amounts and to changes in the mode. We find little evidence that donations signal charity quality – our preferred explanation is that donors use information on earlier donations to decide what is appropriate for them to give.

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