Transcript Mandated Volunteering: An Experimental Approach Sara Helms, Erik Angner, Brian Scott, Sarah Culver

Mandated Volunteering: An
Experimental Approach
Sara Helms, Erik Angner,
Brian Scott, Sarah Culver
(Univ. of Alabama at Birmingham)
Prepared for the ESA World Meeting, June 30, 2007, at LUISS in Rome, Italy
Sara wishes to thank the UAB ADVANCE grant, funded by the National
Science Foundation (SBE-0245090). The researchers would like to
thank the Center for Ethics and Values in the Sciences, the Center for
Economic Education, and the Dept of Finance, Economics, and QM at
UAB.
Background
• Field data suggest ambiguity
• Using a public goods game, we examine
the impact of mandates on the decision to
donate time to benefit a charity
• Preliminary evidence suggests that the
mandate lowers the time donated, and
reduces the variance of time donations
Previous work
• Very little experimental work on volunteering
behavior
• Empirical evidence on impact of mandated
volunteering (Helms, 2007)
• Eckel, Grossman and Johnston (2005) use
public goods game to examine money donations
to charity
• Our experiment is modeled after their game, but
examines time donations to charity
Experimental setup
• Students randomly selected into treatment,
control groups
• Control: Students permitted to stay from 0 – 100
minutes
• Treatment: Students told to stay for 25 minutes
minimum. Permitted to stay up to 100 minutes
• Each minute student completes menial task,
US$0.20 allocated to charity of students’ choice
Preliminary results
Average, in minutes
(std dev)
Average US$
donated
Control
(N = 14)
56.50
(38.77)
$11.30
Forced
(N = 13)
49.85
(22.75)
$9.97
Future Work
• More participants
• Sensitivity test– framing problem?
• Alter experiment design– length of
mandate, etc.
• More games to study volunteer behavior
and forced volunteering
Grazie.