Good Will Hunting: Do Disasters Make Us More Charitable?
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Summary:
Humans are usually compassionate, caring and empathetic toward others, but are we really hardwired for altruism when a disaster hits? There is evidence that people exposed to natural disasters tend to behave more philanthropically, but most studies rely on small-scale surveys and experimental data. For that reason, this paper contributes to the literature by investigating whether the COVID-19 pandemic has altered prosocial tendencies and charitable donations, using a novel daily dataset of debit and credit card transactions. I conduct a real-time analysis of actual charitable donations in three European countries and find that the COVID-19 pandemic and government interventions have no significant effect on how much people contribute to charities as a share of total spending. A higher preference for precautionary savings in the midst of the pandemic appears to outweigh altruistic behavior, while government welfare programs crowds out private charitable donations.
Series:
Working Paper No. 2023/022
Frequency:
regular
English
Publication Date:
February 3, 2023
ISBN/ISSN:
9798400232299/1018-5941
Stock No:
WPIEA2023022
Pages:
14
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