The science of giving : experimental approaches to the study of charity / edited by Daniel M. Oppenheimer, Christopher Y. Olivola.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Feeling good about giving : the benefits (and costs) of self-interested charitable behavior / Lalin Anik ... [and others] -- A model of the value of giving to others compared to the value of having more for oneself : implications for fundraisers seeking to maximize donor satisfaction / Michal Ann Strahilevitz -- Precommitment to charity / Tom Meyvis, Aronte Bennett, and Daniel M. Oppenheimer -- When noble means hinder noble ends : the benefits and costs of a preference for martyrdom in altruism / Christopher Y. Olivola -- Social influences in giving : field experiments in public radio / Rachel Croson and Jen (Yue) Shang -- How social norms, price, and scrutiny influence donation behavior : evidence from four natural field experiments / Richard Martin and John Randal -- The norm of self-interest : implications for charitable giving / Rebecca K. Ratner, Min Zhao, and Jennifer A. Clarke -- The identifiable victim effect : causes and boundary conditions / Tehila Kogut and Ilana Ritov -- Sympathy biases and sympathy appeals : reducing social distance to boost charitable contributions / Deborah A. Small -- Affective motivations to help others : a two-stage model of donation decisions / Stephan Dickert, Namika Sagara, and Paul Slovic -- Donate different : external and internal influences on emotion-based donation decisions / Michaela Huber, Leaf Van Boven, and A. Peter McGraw -- The benefits of asking for time / Wendy Liu -- Heuristics and biases in charity / Jonathan Baron and Ewa Szymanska -- The critical link between tangibility and generosity / Cynthia Cryder and George Loewenstein.

Americans donate over 300 billion dollars a year to charity, but the psychological factors that govern whether to give, and how much to give, are still not well understood. Our understanding of charitable giving is based primarily upon the intuitions of fundraisers or correlational data which cannot establish causal relationships. By contrast, the chapters in this book study charity using experimental methods in which the variables of interest are experimentally manipulated. As a result, it becomes possible to identify the causal factors that underlie giving, and to design effective intervention programs that can help increase the likelihood and amount that people contribute to a cause. For charitable organizations, this book examines the efficacy of fundraising strategies commonly used by nonprofits and makes concrete recommendations about how to make capital campaigns more efficient and effective. Moreover, a number of novel factors that influence giving are identified and explored, opening the door to exciting new avenues in fundraising. For researchers, this book breaks novel theoretical ground in our understanding of how charitable decisions are made. While the chapters focus on applications to charity, the emotional, social, and cognitive mechanisms explored herein all have more general implications for the study of psychology and behavioral economics. This book highlights some of the most intriguing, surprising, and enlightening experimental studies on the topic of donation behavior, opening up exciting pathways to cross-cutting the divide between theory and practice.