Giving in a Large Economy: Price vs. Non-Price Effects in a Field Experiment

We conduct a large-scale …eld experiment with 2,440 subjects in whichwe exogenously vary the price of contributing to the closest empiricalcounterpart of an in…nitely large public good, climate change mitigation.We …nd that the price e¤ect is robust and negative, but quantitativelyweak, with a price elasticity of -0:25. Socioeconomic variables such aseducation, situational variables such as meteorological conditions aroundthe time of the experiment, and attitudinal variables that can be linkedto guilt and moral responsibility dominate the price e¤ect. The latter alsoexplain better than price arbitrage the decision of subjects to declare to be…eld price censored. The results provide an experimental window on theabsolute and relative role of price e¤ects on public goods contributions ina large economy and inform current attempts to build a coherent theoryof charitable giving.[...]