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Contribution Details

Type Working Paper
Scope Discipline-based scholarship
Title The Transfer Paradox and Sunspot Equilibria
Organization Unit
Authors
  • Thorsten Hens
  • Beate Pilgrim
Language
  • English
Institution University of Zurich
Series Name Working paper series / Institute for Empirical Research in Economics
Number No. 70
ISSN 1424-0459
Date 2004
Abstract Text This paper tests the effect of a matching mechanism on donations in a controlled fieldnexperiment. We match the donations of students at the University of Zurich who, each semester, have to decide whether they wish to contribute to two Social Funds. Our results support thenhypothesis that a matching mechanism increases contributions to a public good. However, the effect depends on the extent to which the contributions are matched. Whereas a 25 percentnincrease of a donation does not increase the willingness to contribute, a 50 percent increase does have an effect. In addition, people need to be socially inclined to react to the matching mechanism. The field experiment provides some evidence suggesting that the matching mechanism crowds-out the intrinsic motivation of giving.
Official URL http://www.econ.uzh.ch/wp.html
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