Philanthropy and social networks

Abstract

Charitable giving is motivated by altrusim towards others. We want to analyze to what extent social preferences are an intrinsic characteristic and to what extent they are acquired through social interaction. We distinguish between two acquisition channels: (1) agents interact repeatedly with socially close neighbors which creates directed altruism. For example, Leider, Mobius, Rosenblat, and Do [13] observe that directed altruism raises giving by about 50% compared to baseline giving to starngers in dictator games. (2) Agents are in uenced by and imitate the social preferences of those with whom they interact. For example, Boisjoly, Duncan, Kremer, Levy and Eccles [3] find that greater interaction with an African American roommate makes white students more supportive of affirmative action and related policies even after leaving college.