Corporate Social Responsibility in the work place –Experimental evidence on CSR from a gift-exchange game

We analyze the effect of investments in corporate social responsibility(CSR) on workers’ motivation. In our experiment, a gift exchange game variant,CSR is captured by donating a certain share of profits to a charity. Weare testing for CSR effects by varying the possible share of profits given away.Additionally, we investigate the effect of a mission match, i.e., a worker preferingthe same charity the firm is actually donating to. Our results show thaton average workers reciprocate investments into CSR with increased effort. Amission match does result in higher effort, but only when investment into CSRis high.