Can Charitable Donations Compensate for a Reduction in Government Funding? The Role of Information

Abstract

Are private donors willing to replace cuts in government funding? The authors conducted a survey experiment (n = 2,458) to examine how information about government funding affected decisions to donate money to a large charitable organization in the Netherlands. Providing information about actual budget cuts increased the number of donors. Most new donors were recruited among respondents who had processed the information correctly, underlining the importance of effective communication. The magnitude of the information effect was stronger for citizens with lower levels of empathic concern, who are less likely to donate but can be converted into donors. The authors conclude that policy information shapes not only attitudes but also civic engagement outside the political sphere.

Experimentally Disentangling Donors’ Perceptions of Government-Supported Nonprofits: Cost-Efficiency, Program Impact, and Shared Services

“…Moreover, in the two scenarios where this study asks experiment participants whether they would give their study compensation or a hypothetical US$100, in terms of percentage, we observe that the crowding-out effect is more negative in the former scenario where experimental participants are compensated US$1 or US$2, compared with the latter scenario where experimental participants imagine that they have US$100 to spend. This suggests that income sources and amounts matter (de Li et al, 2019; De Wit & Bekkers, 2020). Even though people consider government funding to be a substitute for their donations to nonprofits, they can be more generous to nonprofits when imagining that they have received a relatively large amount of money.…”

Information use in public administration and policy decision‐making: A research synthesis

“…In other words, the variability of key aspects of information being considered when data use is concerned is high, with just a handful of features recurring more frequently. The most frequent features being studied are: information content (19 studies focused on that feature alone, and 6 additional articles investigate content in conjunction with other information features) (e.g., Bel et al, 2021; Blom‐Hansen et al, 2021; DeLeo & Duarte, 2022; Harrits, 2019; Hong & Kim, 2019; Mizrahi & Minchuk, 2020; Walker et al, 2018; Wang & Niu, 2020) and information purpose (18 studies) (e.g., Choi & Woo, 2022; George & Desmidt, 2018; Korac et al, 2020; Meyfroodt & Desmidt, 2021; Micheli & Pavlov, 2020; Nitzl et al, 2019; Ruijer et al, 2023; Tantardini, 2022), followed by evidence‐based information (16 studies with exclusive focus and 1 study with an additional focus) (e.g., Hall & van Ryzin, 2019; Head, 2016; Petty et al, 2018; Turner et al, 2022; Wagner et al, 2021), information relativity (16 studies) (e.g., George, Baekgaard, et al, 2020; Holm, 2017; Hong et al, 2020; Petersen et al, 2019; van der Voet & Lems, 2022), information availability (10 studies) (e.g., Boer et al, 2018; Wit & Bekkers, 2020), and framing of information (10 studies interested on framing alone and an additional study interested on its framing and purpose) (e.g., Belardinelli et al, 2018; Mikkelsen et al, 2022; Porumbescu et al, 2021).…”

Does Empathy Promote Helping by Activating Altruistic Motivation or Concern About Social Evaluation? A Direct Replication of Fultz et al. (1986)

“…Perhaps these constructs do not actually measure factors that cause helping behavior. Most of the studies that have documented an association of endorsement of the principle of care with a measure of helping behavior have relied on self-reports of helping behavior from survey studies (de Wit & Bekkers, , 2020Wilhelm & Bekkers, 2010), or measures of one's prosocial intentions; only a few studies have included direct observations of helping behavior (Wilhelm & Bekkers, 2016). Likewise, the meta-analytic association of moral identity internalization with observable prosocial behavior is modest (Hertz & Krettenhauer, 2016), and no previous study to our knowledge has examined the association of moral identity symbolization with observable helping behavior.…”