Isolating Warm Glow in Charitable Auction Giving

We use a novel experimental design to isolate warm glow and measure its extent in an auction that contributes the revenues by highest bidders to a charity. A sample of consumers bid to upgrade an agricultural product from a river basin that is not in good ecological status. Charitable donations are crowed-out, one to one, by a reduction in the experimenters� contribution to the charity allowing warm glow to be isolated. Results suggest that subjects do not bid higher in the charitable auction compared to the standard auction (control) treatment therefore providing no evidence of warm glow motivations behind giving.