Charitable Giving Experiments on the Effects of Thank-You Gifts

George E. Newman of Yale University conducted six experiments examining the effects of thank-you gifts on charitable donations. The experiments involved a wide variety of charities and gift types, testing both hypothetical and real donations. Results indicate that offering gifts reduces donations, a counterintuitive effect not explained by charity quality, gift desirability, or anchoring.

Use Cases

• Analyzing the impact of extrinsic incentives on altruistic behavior based on experimental results.
• Modeling donor decision-making in response to thank-you gifts across different charity types.
• Testing theoretical frameworks concerning the effects of incentives on charitable giving.

Strengths

• Six distinct experiments provide a robust experimental foundation.
• Findings were consistent across a wide variety of charities and gift types, as noted in the abstract.
• Experiments tested both hypothetical and real donation scenarios.

Limitations

• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

George E. Newman, Yale University

Collection Method

Six controlled experiments, as described in the abstract.