How Gender and Risk Preferences Influence Charitable Giving : Experimental Evidence

This paper experimentally investigates the determinants of charitable giving. It focuses on the joint analysis of two prominent gender differences, i.e., disparities in dictator giving and risk taking. In a within-subjects experiment, we test the impact of risk preferences on donations. The data find that women donate more and behave more risk-averse than men. Crucially, women show an economically significant positive correlation between risk tolerance and donations. By contrast, no such correlation is found for men. Men and relative risk-averse women give the same. Our findings suggest that risk preferences may help explaining common gender differences in charitable giving