Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Using Dictator Game Experiments to Learn About Charitable Giving

  • Research Papers
  • Published:
VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The dictator game has become a celebrated workhorse of experimental economics and social psychology. In the standard version of the game an individual is given a sum of money and must choose how to split this money between themselves and some other individual. In a variant of the game the individual must split the money between themselves and a charitable cause. This charity version of the dictator game has now been used in well over fifty studies and has provided critical insight on the motives behind giving. It also provides a simple tool that policy makers and practitioners can use to test the effect of interventions. In this paper we explain the different ways in which charity dictator games can and have been used. We also look at the external validity of charity dictator games and discuss the research questions that can be appropriately studied using them.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Or $15 in one session.

  2. The income elasticity measures how giving responds to changes in the endowment. An elasticity of 1 means that a 1% increase in endowment results in a 1% increase in giving. The price elasticity of demand measures how giving responds to a change in the price of giving (caused by a change in the match or rebate). An elasticity of -1 means that lowering the price of giving by 1% results in a 1% increase in giving.

  3. Anonymity is still preserved if the $19 payments are distributed randomly to Subjects. The experimenters know the distribution of individual giving without knowing what any particular individual gave.

  4. Community members donated more and differed in preferred charity—students favoured Doctors without Borders, while community members were more likely to write down their own charity.

References

  • Andreoni, J. (1989). Giving with impure altruism: Applications to charity and Ricardian equivalence. Journal of Political Economy, 97(6), 1447–1458.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Andreoni, J., & Bernheim, B. D. (2009). Social image and the 50–50 norm: A theoretical and experimental analysis of audience effects. Econometrica, 77(5), 1607–1636.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Andreoni, J., Rao, J. M., & Trachtman, H. (2017). Avoiding the ask: A field experiment on altruism, empathy, and charitable giving. Journal of Political Economy, 125(3), 625–653.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bachke, M. E., Alfnes, F., & Wik, M. (2014). Eliciting donor preferences. VOLUNTAS International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 25(2), 465–486.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bekkers, R. (2007). Measuring Altruistic Behavior in Surveys: The All-or-Nothing Dictator Game. In Survey Research Methods (Vol. 1, No. 3, pp. 139–144).

  • Bénabou, R., & Tirole, J. (2006). Incentives and prosocial behavior. American Economic Review, 96(5), 1652–1678.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ben-Ner, A., Kramer, A., & Levy, O. (2008). Economic and hypothetical dictator game experiments: Incentive effects at the individual level. The Journal of Socio-Economics, 37(5), 1775–1784.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Benz, M., & Meier, S. (2008). Do people behave in experiments as in the field? Evidence from donations. Experimental Economics, 11(3), 268–281.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bhati, A., & Hansen, R. (2020). A literature review of experimental studies in fundraising. Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, 3(1).

  • Brown, A. L., Meer, J., & Williams, J. F. (2017). Social distance and quality ratings in charity choice. Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 66, 9–15.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bühren, C., & Kundt, T. C. (2015). Imagine being a nice guy: A note on hypothetical vs. incentivized social preferences. Judgment & Decision Making, 10(2), 185–190.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Camerer, C. F. (2011). Behavioral game theory: Experiments in strategic interaction. Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carlsson, F., He, H., & Martinsson, P. (2013). Easy come, easy go. Experimental Economics, 16(2), 190–207.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carpenter, J., Connolly, C., & Myers, C. K. (2008). Altruistic behavior in a representative dictator experiment. Experimental Economics, 11(3), 282–298.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carpenter, J., & Myers, C. K. (2010). Why volunteer? Evidence on the role of altruism, image, and incentives. Journal of Public Economics, 94(11–12), 911–920.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cartwright, E. J., & Mirza, Z. (2019). Charitable giving when donors are constrained to give a minimum amount. Oxford Economic Papers.

  • Cartwright, E. (2018). Behavioral economics. Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Crumpler, H., & Grossman, P. J. (2008). An experimental test of warm glow giving. Journal of Public Economics, 92(5–6), 1011–1021.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • De Wit, A., & Bekkers, R. (2017). Government support and charitable donations: A meta-analysis of the crowding-out hypothesis. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 27(2), 301–319.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eckel, C. C., & Grossman, P. J. (1996). Altruism in anonymous dictator games. Games and Economic Behavior, 16(2), 181–191.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eckel, C. C., & Grossman, P. J. (2000). Volunteers and pseudo-volunteers: The effect of recruitment method in dictator experiments. Experimental Economics, 3(2), 107–120.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eckel, C. C., & Grossman, P. J. (2003). Rebate versus matching: Does how we subsidize charitable contributions matter? Journal of Public Economics, 87(3–4), 681–701.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eckel, C. C., & Grossman, P. J. (2006). Subsidizing charitable giving with rebates or matching: Further laboratory evidence. Southern Economic Journal, 72, 794–807.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ekström, M. (2012). Do watching eyes affect charitable giving? Evidence from a field experiment. Experimental Economics, 15(3), 530–546.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Engel, C. (2011). Dictator games: A meta study. Experimental Economics, 14(4), 583–610.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Exley, C. L. (2020). Using charity performance metrics as an excuse not to give. Management Science, 66(2), 553–563.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fielding, D., & Knowles, S. (2015). Can you spare some change for charity? Experimental evidence on verbal cues and loose change effects in a Dictator Game. Experimental Economics, 18(4), 718–730.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Franzen, A., & Pointner, S. (2013). The external validity of giving in the dictator game. Experimental Economics, 16(2), 155–169.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Güth, W., & Tietz, R. (1990). Ultimatum bargaining behavior: A survey and comparison of experimental results. Journal of Economic Psychology, 11(3), 417–449.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harrison, G. W., & List, J. A. (2004). Field experiments. Journal of Economic Literature, 42(4), 1009–1055.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Helmig, B., Spraul, K., & Tremp, K. (2012). Replication studies in nonprofit research: A generalization and extension of findings regarding the media publicity of nonprofit organizations. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 41(3), 360–385.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hoffman, E., McCabe, K., Shachat, K., & Smith, V. (1994). Preferences, property rights, and anonymity in bargaining games. Games and Economic Behavior, 7(3), 346–380.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hoffman, E., McCabe, K., & Smith, V. L. (1996). Social distance and other-regarding behavior in dictator games. The American Economic Review, 86(3), 653–660.

    Google Scholar 

  • Li, H., Liang, J., Xu, H., & Liu, Y. (2019). Does windfall money encourage charitable giving? An experimental study. Voluntas International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 30(4), 841–848.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Li, S. X., Eckel, C. C., Grossman, P. J., & Brown, T. L. (2011). Giving to government: Voluntary taxation in the lab. Journal of Public Economics, 95(9–10), 1190–1201.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Luccasen, A., & Grossman, P. J. (2017). Warm-glow giving: Earned money and the option to take. Economic Inquiry, 55(2), 996–1006.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mason, D. P. (2013). Putting charity to the test: A case for field experiments on giving time and money in the nonprofit sector. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 42(1), 193–202.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Reinstein, D., & Riener, G. (2012). Decomposing desert and tangibility effects in a charitable giving experiment. Experimental Economics, 15(1), 229–240.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stagnaro, M. N., Arechar, A. A., & Rand, D. G. (2020). Are those who believe in God really more prosocial? Religion, Brain & Behavior, 10(4), 444–458.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stoop, J. (2014). From the lab to the field: Envelopes, dictators and manners. Experimental Economics, 17(2), 304–313.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vazire, S., Schiavone, S. R., & Bottesini, J. G. (2020). Credibility beyond replicability: Improving the four validities in psychological science. PsyArXiv https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/bu4d3

  • Zizzo, D. J. (2010). Experimenter demand effects in economic experiments. Experimental Economics, 13(1), 75–98.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank the anonymous referees and the Editors of the special issue for their detailed comments on earlier versions of the paper.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Edward Cartwright and Adam Thompson have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. De Montfort University, Leicester, LE1 9BH, UK

    Edward Cartwright

  2. Teaching Fellow in Economics, Aston University, Birmingham, B4 7ET, UK

    Adam Thompson

Authors
  1. Edward Cartwright
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Adam Thompson
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Edward Cartwright.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

No funding was received for conducting this study. The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.

Ethics approval

This study is a literature review and methods piece that did not involve any primary data collection. Hence there is no ethical approval or open data/materials plan to consider.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary Information

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary file1 (DOCX 34 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Cartwright, E., Thompson, A. Using Dictator Game Experiments to Learn About Charitable Giving. Voluntas 34, 185–191 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-022-00490-7

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-022-00490-7

Keywords

Search

Navigation