Why Do People Volunteer? An Experimental Analysis of Preferences for Time Donations
通过实验室实验，研究人们为何愿意捐赠时间，即使其机会成本高于受赠者获得的价值，发现时间捐赠比金钱捐赠带来更大的效用。
Why do individuals volunteer their time even when recipients receive far less value than the donor’s opportunity cost? Previous models of altruism that focus on the overall impact of a gift cannot rationalize this behavior, despite its prevalence. We develop a model that allows for differential warm glow depending on the form of the donation. In a series of laboratory experiments that control for other aspects of volunteering, such as its signaling value, subjects demonstrate behavior consistent with the theoretical assumption that gifts of time produce greater utility than the same transfers in the form of money. Subjects perform an effort task, accruing earnings at potentially different wage rates for themselves or a charity of their choice, with the ability to transfer any of their personal earnings to charity at the end of the experiment. Subjects exhibit strong preferences for donating time even when differential wage rates make it costly to do so. The results provide new insights on the nature of volunteering and gift giving. Data, the online appendix, and the experimental instructions are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2951 . This paper was accepted by Teck-Hua Ho, behavioral economics.