Wednesday, February 21, 2007

I'll donate, but only if you will

Results from a field experiment with a donation box in New Zealand: givers are very much influenced by the (kind of) money already in the box.

2 comments:

martijn said...

Did one really need to do an experiment to conclude that? Isn't this a simple consequence "I don't know what's socially expected, so I'll just do what others do?"

Joris said...

Did one really need to do an experiment to conclude that?

it's not the most suprising result in the world ever, i agree but, for instance, this:

Isn't this a simple consequence "I don't know what's socially expected, so I'll just do what others do?"

doesn't hold when there's a lot of money in the collection box already.