A Complicated Formation of Warm Glow Giving

Abstract

We examine what lies behind the act of warm glow giving in a laboratory experiment. Making use of the experimental design in Crumpler and Grossman (2008, Journal of Public Economics), we separate the warm glow giving from the altruistic motivation. We find that the contributions generated by the warm glow giving are highly sensitive to the reference contribution, indicating to the complementary relationship between own and the others' contributions. Finally, we make regression to investigate the relationship between demographic attributes and the contribution generated by the warm glow.