THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS Vol.127 February 2012 Issue 1 TESTING FOR ALTRUISM AND SOCIAL PRESSURE IN CHARITABLE GIVING STEFANO DELLAVIGNA JOHN A.LIST ULRIKE MALMENDIER ne ver?We that distinguishes two types of motivation:individuals like to give,for example due to altruism or warm glow,and individuals would rather not give but dislike ue to s al pre ure. e design ado rund-r n their doorknobs.Thus the oid the fund-r that the flyer reduces the share of households opening the door by9%to25 and,if the flyer allows checking a Do Not Disturb box,reduces giving by 28% e latter de smaller 10 to-door giving.Combining data from thisd entary field exr we structurally estimate the model.The estimated social pressure cost of saying no toa solicitor is $3.80 for an in-state charity and $1.40 for an out-of-state charity Cha We thank theitor,four urabh B rgava,David C ard,Gary Lawrence Katz.Patrick Kline.Stephan Meier.Klaus Schmidt.Bruce e Shearer I Sturm and the au ces at the o Booth Sch ool of Busi- ty of UC Berk vers all of University of Rotterdam,University of Zurich,Washington University(St.Louis). rStudies),the Sa Eco ed Field Stu er,Jim Cai.Matthe for excellent researchitane Oxford Uni behalf of President The .com 2ics(2012)127.1-56.do110.1093/aie/air050 Advance Access publication on January 18.2012. 1 THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS Vol. 127 February 2012 Issue 1 TESTING FOR ALTRUISM AND SOCIAL PRESSURE IN CHARITABLE GIVING∗ STEFANO DELLAVIGNA JOHN A. LIST ULRIKE MALMENDIER Every year, 90% of Americans give money to charities. Is such generosity necessarily welfare enhancing for the giver? We present a theoretical framework that distinguishes two types of motivation: individuals like to give, for example, due to altruism or warm glow, and individuals would rather not give but dislike sayingno, forexample, duetosocial pressure. Wedesigna door-to-doorfund-raiser in which some households are informed about the exact time of solicitation with a flyer on their doorknobs. Thus, they can seek or avoid the fund-raiser. We find that the flyer reduces the share of households opening the door by 9% to 25% and, if the flyer allows checking a Do Not Disturb box, reduces giving by 28% to 42%. The latter decrease is concentrated among donations smaller than $10. These findings suggest that social pressure is an important determinant of door￾to-door giving. Combining data from this and a complementary field experiment, we structurally estimate the model. The estimated social pressure cost of saying notoa solicitoris $3.80 foranin-statecharityand$1.40 foranout-of-statecharity. Our welfare calculations suggest that our door-to-door fund-raising campaigns on average lower the utility of the potential donors. JEL Codes: C93, D03, H41. ∗We thank the editor, four referees, Saurabh Bhargava, David Card, Gary Charness, Constanca Esteves-Sorenson, Bryan Graham, Zachary Grossman, Lawrence Katz, Patrick Kline, Stephan Meier, Klaus Schmidt, Bruce Shearer, Joel Sobel, Daniel Sturm and the audiences at the Chicago Booth School of Busi￾ness, Columbia University, Harvard University, HBS, University of Amsterdam, University of Arizona, Tucson, UC Berkeley, USC (Marshall School), UT Dallas, University of Rotterdam, University of Zurich, Washington University (St. Louis), Yale University, the NBER Summer Institute (Labor Studies), the San Francisco 2009 Applied Micro Conference, the 2009 Berkeley Conference in Behavioral Economics, the 2010 UCSB Conference on Experimental Economics, the Munich Workshop on Natural Experiments and Controlled Field Studies, and the ASSA 2009 Meetings for helpful comments. We alsothank Daniel Acland, Diane Alexan￾der, JimCai, MatthewLevy, VerateVelde, XiaoyuXia, andespeciallyGautamRao for excellent research assistance. c The Author(s) 2012. Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals. permissions@oup.com. The Quarterly Journal of Economics (2012) 127, 1–56. doi:10.1093/qje/qjr050. Advance Access publication on January 18, 2012. 1 by guest on September 20, 2012 http://qje.oxfordjournals.org/ Downloaded from