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Voluntary taxation and the arts

Journal of Cultural Economics volume 44, pages 589–604 (2020)Cite this article

Abstract

The arts in the USA receive little federal support relative to other developed nations. Because culture and the arts are often viewed as a nonessential role of government, public officials have proposed eliminating public funding for the arts. We examine support for public arts funding using a real-donation experiment (Eckel and Grossman in Games Econ Behav 16(2):181–191, 1996). Real-donation experiments combine elements of a controlled laboratory experiment with the context of a field experiment. In this “giving to the government” experiment, each participant allocates money between herself and a charitable organization supporting either cancer research, education, or the arts. There are two charities within each function: one is a private organization and the other a government agency. Not only do participants donate significant amounts to support the arts generally, we observe significant donations to a government agency that funds the arts. We find similar donation rates to cancer research and education as Li et al. (J Publ Econ 95(9–10):1190–1201, 2011), which provides a measure of external validity. Participants donate less to the arts than to cancer research or education and consistently give less to government organizations than to private charities. However, observing voluntary taxation to support the arts stands in striking contrast to current public policy. Significant predictors of giving include the perceived importance, efficiency, and trust of the organization, as well as gender. Our evidence suggests that current public funding for the arts may be less than optimal.

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Fig. 1

Notes

  1. The FY18 appropriation to the National Endowment for the Arts was less than 0.004 percent of total federal outlays (National Endowment for the Arts n.d.).

  2. See the review by Kirchberg for an example of research on private arts donations (2003).

  3. If any participant would have declined to act as monitor, the process would repeat until a monitor was selected. However, none declined the option to act as monitor.

  4. Li et al. (2011) also vary the organizations by “level” from local, state, and national.

  5. This was a different experimenter than the one tasked with reading instructions or who placed earnings in payment envelopes.

  6. One could equally conjecture that participants believe they are expected to confirm economic theories such as free-riding, so perhaps participants feel compelled to give nothing.

  7. See also Kessler and Vesterlund (2015).

  8. Survey questions: How much do you trust the following organizations in providing [service]? To what extent do you agree or disagree that to provide [service] is the responsibility of the following organizations? How confident are you that donations to the following [service] organizations will be used efficiently?

  9. In Session 2, participants could donate in honor or memory of someone. This option is not provided in Session 1. We find no significant difference in giving between sessions. Regression models include a treatment indicator for Session 2.

  10. Cancer versus education: t = 3.37, p > 0.01; Wilcoxon signed-rank test, z = 3.20, p > 0.01. Education versus arts: t = 9.45, p > 0.01; z = 6.72, p > 0.01. All comparisons of importance remain statistically significant after Bonferroni corrections.

  11. We cannot distinguish between those who give $0 and would not take from those who give $0 only because taking is prohibited. For evidence of taking in dictator allocations, see List (2007); for evidence of taking in real-donation experiments, see Luccasen and Grossman (2019).

  12. In real donation experiments with a charity as the recipient, females tend to be more charitable than males (Mesch et al. 2011).

  13. We also estimate random effects probit models to investigate the likelihood of giving. Giving is more likely if the mission is important, the organization is trusted, or if the participant is female. Results and data are available upon request.

  14. Minimal crowd-out may be a lower bound on the effect. Public funding may act as seed-money that may signal the organization is worthy of support. Public funding may then “crowd-in” additional private donations (see List and Lucking-Reiley (2002).

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Funding

We wish to thank Mississippi University for Women for financial support of this project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Business, Mississippi University for Women, 1100 College Street, Columbus, MS, 39701, USA

    R. Andrew Luccasen III

  2. Department of Finance and Economics, Mississippi State University, Box 9580, Mississippi State, MS, 39762, USA

    M. Kathleen Thomas

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  1. R. Andrew Luccasen III
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Correspondence to M. Kathleen Thomas.

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Luccasen, R.A., Thomas, M.K. Voluntary taxation and the arts. J Cult Econ 44, 589–604 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10824-020-09376-2

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Keywords

  • Charitable giving
  • Taxation
  • Laboratory experiment
  • Real donation
  • Philanthropy
  • The arts

JEL Classification

  • C91
  • D64
  • H2
  • Z1