Discussion paper

DP10051 Relational Warm Glow and Giving in Social Groups

We study charitable giving within social groups. Exploiting a unique dataset, we establish three key relationships between social group size and fundraising outcomes: (i) a positive relationship between group size and the total number of donations; (ii) a negative relationship between group size and the amount given by each donor; (iii) no relationship between group size and the total amount raised by the fundraiser. We rule out classic free-riding to explain these relationships since the number of social group members is only a subset of total contributors. Instead, the findings are consistent with the notion that giving in social groups is motivated by ?relational? warm glow.

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Citation

Scharf, K and S Smith (2014), ‘DP10051 Relational Warm Glow and Giving in Social Groups‘, CEPR Discussion Paper No. 10051. CEPR Press, Paris & London. https://cepr.org/publications/dp10051