Table of contents

1. Introduction (Yuefeng) ....................................................................................................................... 1

1.1 Previous literature ......................................................................................................................... 3
1.2 Our contribution to the literature ................................................................................................. 4
1.3 Structure of the paper ................................................................................................................... 5
2. Experimental design (Yakup).............................................................................................................. 6
2.1 The groups ..................................................................................................................................... 6
2.2 The institutions .............................................................................................................................. 8
2.3 The solicitors ............................................................................................................................... 11
2.4 Time and weather ....................................................................................................................... 12
2.5 The collaborator .......................................................................................................................... 12
2.6 Implementation ........................................................................................................................... 13
2.7 Sample size .................................................................................................................................. 15
3. Data analysis (Yuefeng) .................................................................................................................... 16
4. Discussion (Yakup) ............................................................................................................................ 19
4.2 Pitfalls of the design .................................................................................................................... 19
4.1 Explanation of the results............................................................................................................ 20
4.3 Future research ........................................................................................................................... 21
Bibliography .......................................................................................................................................... 22
Papers ................................................................................................................................................ 22
Websites ............................................................................................................................................ 23
Appendix 2.6.2 ...................................................................................................................................... 24
Appendix 2.6.3 ...................................................................................................................................... 25

1. Introduction
In most economic models, we find in the textbooks, the agents are portrayed as rational and selfinterested; who is solely interested in maximizing his/her own utility. However, this underlying
assumption of rationality and selfishness might not necessary be true or only holds to some extent in
the real world. Several experiments in behavioural economics, which have been conducted in the
past, have shown that agents might not be fully self-interested and in some cases, agents are even
behaving themselves the opposite and altruistically. As an example in Fairness in Simple Bargaining
Experiments1, we saw that the authors actually came to the result by using the concept of a simple
dictator and ultimatum game setup, that agents might not be fully selfish2, and actually behaving
altruistically.
Since these astonishing results has emerged and thereby falsified the underlying assumption in most
economic models namely Homo Economicus, many economists have shown great interest in the
underlying reason for the agents generous and altruistic behaviour. Since then a numerous of
experiments have been carried out in the last two decades to understand whether our generous act
is driven by an altruistic thoughts or social incentives. In some previous researches, it has been
shown that the reason people choose to donate to charity is driven by pure altruism (Becker, 1974)
(Bergstrom et al., 1986). In pure altruism3 the donor is only concerned and motivated by the total
donation amount the charity receives, even if it is the case, which the donation contributions are
from other sources than themselves. In this model the donations is modelled as a part of the
contribution to the charity, which increases the utility of the donor as the total amount of charity
increases.
While pure altruism might be a source to why people donates to charity, it has been shown that
impure altruism, also, can be a source to why people are motivated to contribute to charity.
Andreoni (1989) modelled an alternative theory with impure altruism and warm glow. The basic idea
of this model is that additional to the utility gains donors receives from the total amount the charity
receives, impure altruistic donors also obtains an additional utility by the act of donating itself, which
is modelled as the warm glow. Since the warm glow solely comes from the donation of the individual
donor alone contributes to the charity, impure altruism can also be seen as a source to why people
chooses to donate in charity.

Forsythe, Horowitz, Savin, and Sefton (1994)

By not selfish, we refer to agents caring about other factors than their own payoff/utility e.g. fairness/equity
and more.
3
Hernandez-Murillo & Roisman (2005)
2

Furthermore, recent researches have proposed a third theory that could explain the generous
behaviour in charitable giving. This theory is based on two main motivations; reputation and
influencer effects (Reinstein & Riener, 2010), where the idea of the theory is that people wants to act
generously and increase their generosity in charitable giving, when their decisions and behavioural is
being observed by others. In the first scenario of motivation, the donor is willing to contribute to
charity when their actions are being observed, because these actions will signal his/her largesse,
which improves her own reputation and image. In the second scenario of motivation, the donor
values the total amount charity just as in the pure altruism model. In contrast to the pure altruism
model, the donor in this theory also believes an increase in his/her contribution to the charity can
encourage and influence others to contribute to the charity.
Our paper is highly inspired by the paper from Reinstein & Riener (2010), where we are embracing
the same theory of reputation and influence effect applied in their paper, but in a different
experiment design setting. The experiment we propose to conduct in this paper is a field experiment
with between-subjects, where the goal of the experiment is to study whether different degrees of
publicity of peoples decisions in a charitable giving scheme can positively affect the amount of
donations collected. In other words, the question to research is
Does publicity encourage charitable giving - hereby, to what degree?
The field experiment will be conducted in partnership the Danish Refugee Council (DRC), which can
provide us some of the necessary equipment4 in order to perform this experiment. Danish Refugee
Council is a non-profit charity organization, which means that fully amount of the collected donations
will be allocated to help the refugees in Denmark. The exact location for our field experiment will be
in four educational institutions of the same level in the Copenhagen area (CSS, Panum, CBS, and H.C.
rsted). In these educational institutions, we will be provided solicitors from DRC fully equipped with
collector bins to collect donations. The solicitors will be approaching the students and professors at
the institutions, where they will offer three different options to donate. In the first option (which also
will be our baseline group), the solicitors will simply ask if they would like to contribute to DRC with a
donation, whilst the other two options to donate will be semi-public and public. In the semi-public
group, names and photos of the givers will be public, by hanging posters attached with their pictures
and names around the respective institute. In the public group, the names, photos and the donation
amount of the students and professors will be made public the same way. In order to evaluate our
results and calculate our estimates, we propose three different tests/regressions. First, we will be

List of the equipment to be provided is listed in section 2.3.

using ANOVA test to compare if there are significant differences in the means between our baseline
group and the treatment groups. Additional we will be using a simple linear regression to rule out
some possible noises, which might compromise our results. Lastly, we will be proposing a probit
model in order to evaluate the extensive margin of donations, where we will be estimating the
probability of donating respectively to the three different groups.
In previous research papers testing for charitable giving, researchers in some cases have conducted
experiments using door-to-door methodology (Dellavigna, List and Malmendier, 2012), whilst other
researchers have conducted the experiment using the lab experiment methodology (Reinstein &
Riener, 2010). The main reasoner for why we are conducting the field experiment instead of for
instance a lab experiment is because people behaves differently in the lab and the field. Benz &
Meier (2008) argue, that peoples behaviour differ whether an experiment is conducted as lab or
field, where they finds, that people are general more generous in a lab environment compared to a
lab environment.
In this paper, we are going to provide a thorough proposal of how to conduct a field experiment to
evaluate effects of publicity in charitable giving at educational institutions. Our main hypothesis is
Publicity in charitable giving will encourage and increase generosity,
where our secondary hypothesis is that a higher degree of publicity will further increase generosity in
a charitable giving. We seek to give a better understanding of the results by the explanation of the
altruistic, Repseeker, and Influencer effects in charitable giving.

1.1 Previous literature

The economic literature, which explores the Repseeker and Influencer effects in a charitable giving
environment, is limited, where Reinstein & Riener (2010) are among the first to present a paper,
which allows to distinguish between the effects of reputation and influence. The main idea behind
Reinstein & Rieners experiment builds upon the two motivations as mentioned earlier. Namely,
Repseeker and Influencer effects, where they suggest that people might act generously and increase
their largesse when others are observing their actions. In order to give the test subjects a feeling of
their decisions are being observed, they cleverly divided their experiment into different stages. In the
first stage, the test subjects are participating in a meet and greet stage, where they exchange some
basic information and where they reads about charity Brot fur die Welt(Bread for the World),
which is an international development organization. Furthermore, in this stage, the test subjects also
3

reads the instructions to the experiment. In the next stage of the experiment, the test subjects will
be exposed to different treatments, where they will decide how much of the endowment they have
been allocated with in the lab is going to be donated to the charity. The test subjects may keep the
amount of the endowment, they chooses not to donate to the charity. The main difference in the
treatments the test subjects are exposed to is the amount of the information transmitted. All
depending on the treatment, the test subjects is either told that his/her donation will be reported to
other test subjects or reported anonymously. Lastly, the test subjects can also be told, that their
donation will be reported along with their identity.
Their hypothesis is that when a donation is not going to be reported, that there should not be any
significant Repseeker nor Influencer effects involved. In the case where it is reported anonymously,
they argue, that there might be an Influencer effect but no significant Repseeker effects. Lastly, when
the donation amount and identity are reported together, they argue, that there is potentially both
Repseeker and Influencer effects.
In their paper, they find that leaders are influential only when their identities are revealed along
with their donations, and female leaders are more influential than males. Identified leaders
predictions suggest that are aware of their influence. They respond to this by giving more than either
the control group or the unidentified leaders5. Which could indicate, that there are some kind of
influencer effects, when both the donation amount and their identity is revealed and observable by
others, which coincides with the theory.

1.2 Our contribution to the literature

As mentioned above, the economic contribution regarding reputation and influence effect in a
charitable giving is limited. With our paper, we would contribute to the economic literature by giving
a better sight and understanding of altruistic behavioral in form of reputation and influence effect
within charitable giving. Furthermore, charity organizations might find our paper interesting and
important as well, since it might desirable for the organizations to experiment with alternative
methods to collect donations in order to increase the donations.

Reinstein & Riener (2010) pp1.

1.3 Structure of the paper

In the next section of the paper, we will thoroughly explaining how the experiment is going to be
conducted, where we in section 3 will explain the methodologies we are applying in order to
evaluate our results. In the last section, section 4, we will mainly have focus on the usefulness of our
results and possible limitations and pitfalls of the experiment, where we also will be talking about
further researches.

2. Experimental design
A natural field experiment is carried out in four educational institutions. Solicitors from The Danish
Refugee Council are stationed around these institutions randomly asking students and professors,
who come across, for donations with a self-imposed level of publicity. In other words, it is a oneround experiment with a between-subject design where voluntary solicitors ask potential givers to
make one-time-donations to charity and choose how they would like to donate. They can be
allocated to the groups referred as baseline, semi-public, or public.
In this section, we will give a detailed description of the experimental design. Through subsection 1
to 5, we explain the important components of the design such as the treatment groups, institutions,
and the solicitors. Thereafter, we explain thoroughly how the experiment is carried out.

2.1 The groups

The aim of this research is to clarify whether we act more generous the more public we are or rather
choose to be. Therefore, there will be one baseline (control) group and two different treatment
groups with two different levels of publicities imposed in order to have a deeper and clearer
understanding of the human behaviour when doing good deeds accordance to the social norm.

2.1.1 Baseline
The baseline group consists of normal givers who choose to just make a donation and leave. This is
the usual way of publicly making donations where the solicitor has a collection bin. This group is also
considered as being anonymous, though the solicitors must not refer to these potential givers as
anonymous because we want to prevent the effect of language priming.
It is possible to argue that givers whom are in the baseline group are not truly anonymous.
Indeed, because, first of all, they are being approached by a solicitor who has to observe how much
they donate and, secondly, Ariely, Bracha & Meier (2007) found out in their research that we act
more generously and prosocially in public than in private settings. The normal givers are also being
made aware of that we only want the amount of donation, which means that their name or any
other private information are unneeded. At the end of the registration of the donation there will be a
commitment from The Danish Refugee Council that if the giver chooses to be a normal giver then so
shall their identity and the amount of donation be anonymous. The Danish Refugee Council has to

make such a commitment especially for those who choose to donate by Mobile Pay because DRC will
automatically receive information of their phone number and name. It is very important that the
solicitors do not attract too much attention to these points because it might affect the givers and
hereby ruin the baseline group. Therefore, it is important that the potential givers feel comfortable
facing the solicitors, which requires that the solicitors do not show any unfavourable
expression/behaviour and make sure that they do not detain them too long.

2.1.2 Semi-public
We want the potential givers to have the option of having their identity as a donor made public
without disclosing the amount of donation in the institution they are approached. Unlike Reinstein &
Reiner (2010), who varied the anonymity by proposing a treatment where the givers identity is held
anonymous and the donation amount is disclosed among the experimentees in order to uncover the
Influencer effect, we want to do the opposite and try to analyse the behaviour when hiding the
amount of donation and disclosing the identity.
The semi-public group will have their identity made public in the faculty, in which they donated, by
hanging posters with a photo of themselves and their names attached underneath. It is required that
the photo is somewhat alike a passport photo, such that it is clear and lifelike and taken from in
front. The head must be at the centre of the photo and there should be a neutral facial expression or
a natural smile, which means that any silly looking or childhood photo and so on will be declined.
Below is a sketch of how the photo somewhat ought to look like.
Illustration 2.1.2A: A sketch of
the required photo.

If a potential giver chooses to donate semi-publicly, he will naturally have to state his full name and
e-mail address, too. The e-mail address is needed in order to send the giver an e-mail asking for a
picture he wants to be seen on the posters. This option of making the giver send a picture himself
has been chosen over the other option of the solicitor taking a picture of the giver on the spot. There
is a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, it is to avoid information overload on the solicitors because
7

they already have to learn the whole procedure. The second reason is the handling of data. It will
require more work to find each names corresponding picture. The best option would be equipping
the solicitors with a smartphone and making them use an application such as Snapchat to take a
picture, write their names on it and then save it. However, this might be troublesome because the
solicitors will be elders who most likely is not very accustomed to the newer technology - it is
explained in section 2.3 why the solicitors are elders. Thirdly, the potential semi-public giver might,
for instance, have a bad hair day and, therefore, not like the idea of taking a picture on the spot.
Lastly, there is only the time cost of gathering the pictures and attaching them to their owners
name, hence, less costful. Leaving the reasons for this method out, we are fully aware of that asking
for a picture by mail may be too demanding so they end up keeping off donating semi-publicly.

2.1.3 Public
The second treatment group is the one we refer as the public group. The difference between the
public and semi-public givers is that the public givers get their amount of donation disclosed, too,
while the semi-public ones do not. This simple difference is expected to make difference in the
amount donated compared to the semi-public group because of the Influencer effect and a
comparatively higher Repseeker effect, which Reinstein & Reiner (2010) also tried to measure
separately in their study. Because the potential givers themselves have to choose how they would
like to donate, it will be possible to see how they prefer to make a donation: normally, semi-publicly,
or publicly. Furthermore, we will bring to light whether just the reputation as altruistic is enough to
make people want to donate more or if making the donation amount public, too, encourages even
higher donations. This matter will be explained in detail in the section of data analysis.
Those who choose to donate and be public have to state the same information as the semi-public
group, i.e. name, e-mail, and donation amount. The reason for this is the same as previously
explained in section 2.1.2.

2.2 The institutions

The experiment will, as mentioned, take place in 4 educational institutions. The reason why
educational institutions were chosen is, first of all, because it is doable. A door-to-door solicitation of
donations in Denmark is nearly impossible and even if possible it will be a huge disadvantage. By law,
an organisation is only allowed to perform door-to-door solicitation once a year. It is cited in Lov om
indsamling m.v. (: Law of solicitation et cetera), chapter 3, section 5:
8

 5. Husindsamling m ikke finde sted, jf. dog stk. 2. Stk. 2. Indsamlingsnvnet kan
efter ansgning meddele tilladelse for 3 r ad gangen til foretagelse af n rlig
landsdkkende eller geografisk afgrnset husindsamling eller n enkeltstende
husindsamling, som ivrksttes p baggrund af en srlig begivenhed, hvis
ansgeren
1) er omfattet af 4, stk. 1,
2) kan sandsynliggre, at der ved indsamlingen indbringes et godt indsamlingsresultat,
og
3) har den forndne folkelige forankring.
Stk. 3. Tilladelse til husindsamling efter stk. 2 indebrer, at ansgeren p dagen
ogs kan foretage gadeindsamling.
Unfortunately, no charity organisation will take the risk and prioritise such an experiment high
enough to carry it out during a nationwide solicitation in which is only done once a year. Even if the
Danish Refugee Council would be willing to help out with a door-to-door solicitation, they would not
be willing to let us choose the day the experiment is carried into execution, because that would
mean letting the experimenter decide on when a nationwide solicitation should be done. The day of
the nationwide solicitation is on the second Sunday of November every year, which means during
autumn and on a weekend. This is quite different from the requested date.
Besides, we do not send letters to the households instead because there are several things we will
not be able to control in comparison to the chosen approach. This is for example the social
backgrounds, the time the letters are opened, the weather, and so on.
One thing that speaks in favour of carrying the experiment out in educational institutions is that
the university students and professors are present in the institutions on a regular basis, which makes
it easier and more efficient to propose the potential giver a treatment of making him semi-public or
public.
In order to control an unwanted likely effect caused by different educational levels, we keep this
effect fixed by going for the institutions of long-term higher education programmes6. Long-term
higher education programmes consists of the Bachelor programmes at universities, the Masters
programmes, and the PhD programmes.7 No research provide a clear theory of whether the donation

6
7

In Danish: Lange videregende uddannelser (LVU).

The Danish Accreditation Institution (March 2014)

amount varies across students of different education levels but many studies find a positive
correlation between graduated education and philanthropy and, hereby, one of them is Schervish &
Havens (1997). The same evidence is found even when controlling the income (Brown, 1999).
Furthermore, students of long-term higher education programmes are expected to donate more
than the short-term and medium-term. There is evidence of higher level of parental education
implying higher donations (Bekkers, 2005). On the ground of this positive relation and an analysis
made in DeFacto by Djf in 2013, where a clear trend of an upward mobility in the pattern of
educational level is seen, which means that we tend to get an education of the same level as our
parents or higher. Figure 2.2A - data taken from the mentioned analysis by Djf8 - shows the
proportion of the level of parental education for those taking a vocational education, a medium-term
higher education, and a long-term higher education:
Figure 2.2A: The students social backgrounds
100%

12%

80%

27%

44%

60%

88%

40%

73%

56%

20%
0%
Vocational education

Medium-term

Long-term

Parents with a higher education programme

Parents are unskilled or skilled

In figure 2.2A, we see that students of long-term higher education programmes have parents with
quite higher educations. Forty-four percentage of them have minimum one parent with a short-term,
medium-term, or long-term higher education, unlike the students of medium-term and vocational
educations who is only at, respectively, 27 % and 12 %. Briefly, we will have a higher overall
collection in these institutions compared to for example a university college.
In the experiment, the fields of education of the potential givers are varied such that we, for
instance, do not only approach social science students and professors but a broad spectrum of
educations. So the field of education will not be controlled, indeed, because studies show
inconsistent findings. Frey & Meier (2004) state in their paper that students in economics, law,
medicine, veterinary medicine, computer science, and natural science contribute significantly less
than arts and theology students. Bekkers & Wiepking (2011) state that graduates in economics are

Djf, DeFacto (Marts 2013)

10

not less prosocial than, for instance, graduates in engineering, medicine, and law, while Bauman &
Rose (2011) finds the opposite. Consequently, the experiment is conducted in different educational
institution, which is also necessary to reach a sufficient sample size.
According to a report by NPR9, which is based on an empirical analysis by The Chronicle of
Philanthropy10 in 2012, philanthropy varies greatly between the regions of a country. In order to
control such geographical effects, the institutions are only chosen from Copenhagen.
As mentioned, the experiment will take place in four educational institutions. By four institutions, we
actually mean four buildings, which each houses a number of institutions. These are the Centre for
Health and Society (CSS), the Panum Institute (Panum), Solbjerg Plads (CBS), and H.C. rsted
Institutet (H.C. rsted). CSS houses the following institutes: economics, psychology, sociology,
anthropology, and political science. Panum houses institutes of medicine, odontology, public health,
and a number of other institutions. CBS houses Finance, marketing, law, and so on. H.C. rsted
houses institutes like chemistry, mathematics, and computer science. The number of students in
these educational institutions are:
Table 2.2A: Recent approximate numbers of students at the concerned institutions11

CSS

Panum

CBS

H.C. rsted

6,500

8,000

22,500

9,500

2.3 The solicitors

There will be five solicitors who at each institution. In order to prevent any varied effect from trust,
we control the age and gender of the solicitors. Boltz, Dyer & Miller (2010) found in their study that
women are perceived to lie less than men, which is why all the solicitors will be women because it is
also of interest to collect as high donation amounts as possible so it can pay. As for the age, Kocher &
Sutter (2007) conclude in their trust game study that, trustworthiness is prevailing in all age groups,
but its degree seems to increase with age12. Hence, people of higher age is perceived as more
trustworthy. The findings of these studies is the reason why the solicitors for this experiment will be
elderly women.

Fessler, P. (August 2012)

Myers, J., Narayanswamy, A., Oh, S. (2012)
11
See Bibliography for the respective URLs to the data.
12
Kocher & Sutter (2007), pp378.
10

11

When The Danish Refugee Council recruits the solicitors, they are made aware of the treatments.
They will have a short course in what the procedure is and what is expected of them to do and not
do. The potential solicitors are also made aware of that this is a four-day long experiment because it
has to be the very same five solicitors who collect the donations at each institution. These are
described more in section 2.6.

2.4 Time and weather

The experiment will be carried out in the beginning of the month, not too long from the payday, in
order to have higher probable donations. The limit is within the first 7 working days because the
experiment should be carried out at all four institutions during the same week - that is to say that it
should start on a Monday or a Thursday.
It is, also, of importance that the weather is identical all four days. The experiment is carried out in
the end of fall and the beginning of summer - to be more exact, April or May. This time of the year
will be the warmest time of the school year before the exam period. There are two great advantages
in doing it on a warm day contrary to cold day. Firstly, Guguen & Stefan (2013) find out in their
study that people are more helpful on sunny days compared to cloudy days. Willims & Bargh (2008),
also, concluded physical warmth activating psychological warmth. These papers find a clear impact
from warmth on generosity. Secondly, Kang et al. (2011) investigated in a trust game whether
physical temperature had an effect on trust. What they found in their study was enhanced trust
behaviour in those who touched a warm pack.
Accordingly, the time for the solicitation is in the middle of the lunchtime and afterwards, hence,
between 12 and 2 PM. This is because decision fatigue and hunger can sway our decision. A study
about how the decisions of eight judges sway during the day shows that the judges make decisions,
which are greatly more favourable, after the lunch break (Danziger et al., 2011). This is the main
reason for the chosen execution time. Another advantage is the number of students and professors
at the institutions at the given time. We believe that this is the best time to encounter as many
potential givers as possible.

2.5 The collaborator

The Danish Refugee Council states the following on their website:

12

The Danish Refugee Council (DRC) is a humanitarian, non-governmental, non-profit

organisation working in more than 30 countries throughout the world.13
Our collaborator is a big charity organisation who this year, 8th November 2015, had a nationwide
collection of 20 million DKK in three hours, as stated in their website14.
DRC has a key role in the execution of this experiment. They have to provide the following:

Recruitment of the desired five voluntary solicitors.

A tablet to each solicitor in order to register donations.

Collection bins.

Mobile Pay QR code and number on the bins.

Clothes with their logo on.

The production of posters.

2.6 Implementation
In this subsection, the whole procedure of the experiment is described in detail. There is a preexperiment stage where the solicitors are recruited and the necessary information and equipment is
given. The second stage describes the actual execution of the experiment taking place at the
institutions. The third stage is the handling of data so the posters can be made.

2.6.1 The pre-experiment

After the Danish Refugee Council has recruited the demanded five solicitors they will be given a
thoroughly explanation of how solicitation is carried out. This brief course will not take longer than
30 minutes.
After a warm welcome with tea and coffee to the solicitors, who were willing to be volunteers to
this 4-day-solicitation, we come straight to the point and tell them that the solicitation will be
different from the usual, as they already know. Hereby, we tell them about the locations of the
educational institutions, where they will be stationed, and how we want them to approach the
students and professors. They will once again be made aware of the treatments and the importance
of not being persuading to, for example, donating as a normal giver. Thereafter, we will give them
their DRC uniforms and tell them to put it on when on duty. Afterwards, they are made notice of the
13
14

https://www.drc.dk/about-drc (Last accessed 18 December 2015)

https://flygtning.dk/ (Last accessed 26 November 2015)

13

QR code and phone number on the bins and how Mobile Pay works. Then, the usage of the tablets is
introduced.

2.6.2 The experiment

The solicitors and the experimenter meet each day of solicitation fifteen minutes before the
experiment begins, hence 11:45 AM, at the main entrance of the institutions, as agreed upon
beforehand, so the solicitors get collection bins and tablets handed out, whereupon they are
stationed at the specific spots the experimenter chose. In Appendix 2.6.2 is an illustration of where
they are stationed in the Centre for Health and Society shown as an example. When it is time and the
solicitors are ready, they start friendly approaching the potential givers. They must not be cold and
repulsive; instead, they have to approach them with a smile and be accommodating. It is, by the way,
important that the solicitors mention the possibility of donating by Mobile Pay if a potential giver
rejects to donate because he does not have any cash. When a potential giver stops and shows
interest, the solicitor asks him whether he would just like to make the donation or make use of the
option of being made public by hanging posters around the institution. Now if the potential giver just
wants to make the donation and leave, only the donation amount is registered. However, if he finds
interest in donating public, the solicitor briefly explains the semi-public and public options, whereby
the giver chooses one. The registration of the donations happens as illustrated in Figure 2.6.2A
below.
Figure 2.6.2A: An example of how a donation is registered on the tablet

14

Firstly, the solicitor chooses the group the giver wants to be in and presses the green arrow to move
on. Secondly, depending on how the giver wants to donates, one of the three screens show up.
When the blanks are filled the solicitor presses on the done button and the registration is done. If
the giver chooses to donate semi-publicly or publicly an e-mail asking for a picture, as described in
section 2.1.2, will automatically be sent when the registration is done. All five solicitors continues to
collect donations from the students and professors until time is up. When they are done collecting
donations, they meet up with the experimenter at the main entrance once again. The experimenter
collects the bins and tablets whereupon he once again reminds them of the location for tomorrow
and thanks them goodbye. This procedure is repeated all four days at the different institutions; the
order of the institutions to collect is not of importance. Finally, after the last collection day is over,
the whole team who supported carrying the experiment out gathers to a pleasant time chatting with
each other over some refreshments.

2.6.3 The post-experiment

Now that the experiment is executed, the data is ready to analysis but before that the pictures of the
semi-public and public givers have to be assembled and attached on their respective posters. The
treatment groups get a reminder four days after the experiment if they have not sent a picture, and
three days later the assembling of pictures stops and the posters are finished and hanged,
respectively, on the institutions. In Appendix 2.6.3 is an illustration of what the posters of the public
givers from the CSS somewhat looks like. In case some semi-public and public givers do not send
their picture, only their name and, if public, also donation amount will be attached to the posters
leaving the picture area blank.

2.7 Sample size

Previous literature do not suggest any guidance because they are mostly done by sending a letter or
a door-to-door collection. Despite this, we have estimated a sample size of about 400 givers. We
asked two former voluntary solicitors15 of DRC about their experience of the three-hour nationwide
collection. One of them gave an interval of 20 to 40 donations while the other estimated 25 to 30
donations during these 3 hours, which corresponds to, respectively, intervals of 13 to 26 and 16 to 20
donations in two hours. This, in average, gives 18 donations per solicitor per hour. Multiplying this by
five solicitors and four days, we get 360 donations in total. We believe it is possible to reach this
15

They wanted to be anonymous.

15

number of donations if we assume that a solicitor one the average spends 2 minutes per giver and it
takes, say, 3 minutes to find the next giver then it sums to 480 donations during the four day
experiment. This sample size will be sufficient to get significant results from the data analysis.

3. Data analysis
In this section of the paper, we are going to explain the methodology we propose to use in order to
evaluate our results, but first, let us state the hypothesis we are testing in our experiment again.

(1) The main hypothesis of our experiment is that people among the groups of public and semipublic are going to donate more than our baseline group, with other words that the publicity
can increase generosity in charitable giving.

(2) The secondary hypothesis of our experiment is that people in the public group will donate
more than the semi-public group, with other words that, the increase in degree of publicity
will increase of the donations in charitable giving.

In order to evaluate and estimate the effects of publicity treatments, we propose three different
tests/regressions. In addition, we assume the experiment is carried out using randomization, which
means that we can use simple tools to calculate our estimates.
The first test we propose is a simple ANOVA test. The purpose of this test to compare the means of
donations between groups. By using an ANOVA test, we can test our main and secondary hypothesis
at once- that is whether the means of donations between the baseline group and the two treatment
groups are equal to each other. The ANOVA test is similar to the student t-test, but in contrast to the
student t-test, ANOVA test allows us to compare the means between more groups without
committing type I error, which is the case, when we falsely rejects a true null-hypothesis. If we apply
the student t-test to test our main and secondary hypothesis, there will be a probability of to finding
a publicity treatment effect that is not present - even if the means of the donations between the
groups are not different from each other. Alternately, we could also perform three student t-tests,
where we compared the means between two groups at time. In order to compare the results from

16

the ANOVA tests, we will be running four different ANOVA tests. One for each of the data collected
from the education institutions.
Additional to the ANOVA test. We also propose a simple linear OLS regression analysis to test our
two hypothesis. Similar to the ANOVA test, we will be running four OLS regressions. One for each of
the data collected from the education institutions. The following regression (1) will be ran for each of
the four education institutions:
(1) = + 0 + 1 + 2 + 3 +

The dependent variable donation represents the amount of the donation, whilst the independent
variables Base, Semi, Public represents the respectively groups of baseline group and
treatment groups. Lastly, the EI variable is an education institute dummy we construct that can
takes value from one to four16. By including this variable, we can evaluate whether the institution
itself can have any impact on the amount of donation. By running this regression, we will be able to
evaluate whether the public treatments we have imposed have a significant positive effect on the
amount of donation. From our hypothesis, we expect the coefficient estimates for parameters Semi
and Public to be positive, that is 2 and 3 , whilst the coefficient estimate for Base 1 to be zero,
since we have not implemented any treatments to this group. Additionally, we also expect the
coefficient estimate of Public to be larger than Semi, that is 3 >2 . Even though the OLS regression
can provide a more robust way to test our hypothesis, there are many problems with this kind of
regression. Since we are running a cross-sectional regression analysis, we might have many omitted
variables in the residual, which might be correlated with the dependent variable and cause OLS to
produce unbiased estimates. In order to take account for those variables, we have proposed a
second OLS regression, where we include two more variables in order to control for some of the
thinkable omitted variables. There exists of course omitted variable, which we cannot observe and
thereby terminate our estimate results.
The following regression (2) will be ran for each of the four education institutions:

(2) = 0 + + + + 1 + 2 + 3 +

16

Depending which institution we are running the regression for this variable can take value from one to four.
An example: CSS:1, Panum:2, CBS:3, H.C. rsted:4.

17

As mentioned above, we have added two additional variables in order to control for some of the
thinkable omitted variables. One of them is the weather dummy Rainy, which takes value zero when
it is not rainy and one when it is rainy. Since we cannot promise the weather condition is the same in
the four different institutions during the same week, we propose this variable because the weather
condition can have an impact on the donation amount, which it also mentioned earlier in section 2.4
Time and environment. The other variable we have included additional to regression (1) is individual
characteristic dummy . With this dummy, we attempts to capture the individual
characteristic of each of our solicitors. This dummy will be taking values17 from one to five.
From our hypothesis, we expect the same signs and values for the coefficient estimates for Base,
Semi and Pubilc in regression (2) as in regression (1). Regarding the weather dummy, we expect a
negative coefficient estimate for those institutions where the experiments were carried out in rainy
days. Otherwise, the weather dummy Rainy simply drops out. The last dummy variable can be
positive, negative, zero, since the individual characteristics of the solicitors can have a positive,
negative, or zero influence on the donation amounts.
The last regression method we propose to estimate and test our hypothesis is a probit model. So far
we have only been analysing the intensive margin of donation in a charitable giving, that is how
much people chooses to donate in a charitable giving based on the publicity treatments we have
imposed. By using a probit model, we will be analysing the extensive margin of donation in a
charitable giving, which is whether the imposed publicity treatments have a probability to encourage
people to donate in charitable giving. Following regression (3) estimates the probability of people
chooses to donate, where the dependent variable is a binary variable18.

= 0 + + + + 1 + 2 + 3 +

From our hypothesis, we expect the signs of the coefficient estimates for parameters Public and Semi
to positive. Additionally, since it is a probit model, we cannot interpret the magnitude of the
coefficient estimates.

17
18

Solicitor 1:1, solicitor 2:2.. solicitor 5:5.

, can take two values: 0 when people dont donate and 1 when people donate.

18

4. Discussion
In this section, we discuss various things about the experiment. Firstly, we discuss the potential
pitfalls of the experimental design. Secondly, we explain the reasons for the results in case they are
in line or not in line with our hypothesis. Lastly, we discuss interesting further research or
improvements that could lead to deeper or wider understanding philanthropic behaviour in public.

4.2 Pitfalls of the design

As mentioned in section 2.1.1, even though we want the normal givers to be as much unaffected as
possible by the social pressure, this might just not be possible because we act more prosocially in
public(Ariely, Bracha, and Meier, 2007). This will end up diminishing the effects of the treatments if
our hypothesis hold, that is to say if they give more the more public they are. In the matter of the
experiment being carried out in an open area and the treatment groups not getting the fruits of
their philanthropy, which we explain as reputation seeking and being of influence, the potential
givers may not find the treatments appealing. In other words, there is a possibility of the location and
the time of publication impairing the treatment.
The experiment does not reveal the beliefs of the givers. It is not possible to know what they believe
others will think about them donating semi-publicly and publicly. They might even think far enough
to think that being a semi-public giver might actually have a negative impact on their reputation as
altruistic because people will know that the semi-public giver chose to be that and therefore might
have donated less than the rest. Furthermore, it is also of importance to know how they perceive the
social norm of giving. This being said, the givers each have a belief of what the average amount of
donation is. Some might have an underestimated belief of the average and end up donating below
average even though they donated more than their own belief of the average donation, and vice
versa. Since the givers can donate however much they want to, this uncertainty is possible to be
present.
A weakness of the experimental design is that it is a single round experiment. A two round
experiment, inspired by Reinstein & Reiner (2010), would open more doors as regards analysing the
correlations between charitable giving and publicity, which is further discussed in section 4.3.
Another weakness is the time it takes to make a donation. Many might reject the option to donate
semi-publicly or publicly simply because it sounds troublesome and time consuming. This can show
great difference in the number of givers in the treatment groups compared to the baseline group. A
third weakness is the characteristics of the solicitors. No matter how of much we point out that the
19

way they approach has to be similar, at some point their characteristic differences will show. The
best solution we could come up with was to have the same solicitors collect donations at all four
institutions, so we can control it statistically afterwards. An option to solving this problem would be
to recruit more solicitors in order to average the characteristics out. The reason we keep us from
doing this, is that we think that more than five solicitors might nevertheless not help because we will
then have to station them at more locations around the institution. The efforts of some solicitors
might go in vain because they will encounter very few potential givers where they are. A fourth
weakness is the place where the experiment is to be conducted. There may arise issues of external
validity since the potential givers only consist of a specific type of individuals; professors and
students of long-term higher education programmes.
This experimental design does not and cannot take external effects such as a refugee crisis into
account. The distribution of the groups and the donation amounts may greatly change depending on
a crisis. Since we collect donations to the Danish Refugee Council, a refugee crisis may lead potential
givers to one direction or another. It can be a matter of increased effects in every group. This can
especially be the case with the Influencer effect: such a crisis might just be the right time for the
public giver to be of great influence.

4.1 Explanation of the results

Analysing the data can lead to various conclusions. Our hypothesis may or may not show significance,
which there can be various reasoning to these. We believe that the reason behind wanting to be a
semi-public giver is to improve ones reputation as altruistic, influenced by Reinstein & Reiner (2010).
We hypothesize that they will donate more than the normal givers but not as much as the public
givers. The reason behind semi-public givers donating fractionally more than normal givers may not
only be one. Firstly, we consider the difference in their donations as simply paying the price of
improved reputation. They want the reputation but do not want to pay a high price and therefore
choose the group in the middle, which is the semi-public option. Secondly, they donate more
because of pure/impure altruistic reasons and do not want to leave with a bad conscience. Since
these reasons are not sure to hold, there are no guarantee that the hypothesis holds either. The data
analysis might actually show the exact opposite where they donate less than normal givers. This
might be explained as due to their opportunistic intention of making others think that they are
generous without actually being it.
We expect public givers to, certainly, donate more because people will get to know how much
they have donated (Reinstein and Reiner, 2010). There is talk of two possible explanation to this.
20

One, they seek to improve their reputation and go all out on showing off. By doing this, they are not
only known as a good person but a better person, because people then knows how much big they
donated too. Two, they want to be of influence to others in order to encourage them to donate
more. They take the leader role as Reinstein & Reiner (2010) explained in their paper and show that
as a fellow student or colleague it is possible to donate more. In case potential givers do not want to
be made public then our hypothesis does not hold. The reason might be that they do not like others
seeing them or that they would donate normally or semi-publicly rather than donating publicly if
they do not want to make a high donation.

4.3 Future research

Since this paper is only a prepared plan for the experiment and we, therefore, do not have any
results, it is difficult to clearly state the relevance of further research. Interesting future research can
be, as mentioned above, designing a two-round experiment. By doing that we will be able to analyse
the effects of publishing donations. It will enable us to see how making the treatment groups public
effects how they donate and how much they donate in the second round so we can test persistence
in the choice making. Another interesting view would be the movement in the baseline group and
the treatment groups; there might occur a significant difference in the relative number of givers in
the groups.
Another further research can be looking into significant differences in age groups and gender. We do
not ask for the givers age or note their gender in order to make easier for both the solicitors and the
givers. Because of this, we do not control these variables in our regression either.
As we argued in section 4.2 about the givers belief, one could do something to reveal their belief of
an average donation amount or the experimenter could make the potential givers aware of the
average donation amount either by the solicitors stating it or, for instance, by stating it in the
university paper beforehand so it remains in their subconsciousness.

21

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Appendix 2.6.2

24

Appendix 2.6.3

25