Abstract
Using data from the 2001 Giving and Volunteering in the United States survey, I examine household charitable donations to environmental organizations. Household income has a positive impact on environmental giving. While the tax price affects overall charitable contributions, it does not affect environmental giving. More education, being female, homeownership, and voting are also associated with a greater likelihood of contributing to the environment. African-Americans and Latinos are less likely to contribute to the environment, although conditional on giving, Latinos give more. Retired persons and households with children are less likely to contribute to the environment. Larger households give less to the environment. Households from the Northeast are the most likely to make environmental contributions while households from the South are the least likely.
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Notes
The data are from the Independent Sector (purchasing information is available at http://www.independentsector.org).
See Peloza and Steel (2005) for a recent meta-analysis of elasticity estimates for charitable contributions.
The 2001 survey is a change from the previous surveys in that it was not conducted by Gallup, it involved telephone rather than face-to-face interviews, and respondents were 21 and older rather than 18 and older.
Further discussion of the probit model is found in Greene (2000) p. 814–15.
The natural logarithms of the dependent variables are used in the Tobit and regression models. To avoid taking the logarithm of zero, $10 is added to the donation amount.
See, Greene (2000) pp. 906–910, for a detailed discussion of the Tobit model.
Calculation of the tax price followed the general practice in the literature. Exact information on calculation of taxable income and marginal tax rates is available from the author.
This is the same information on decision-makers that Andreoni et al. (2003) utilize in their examination of the impact of household decision-making on charitable giving.
While the survey was designed to be nationally representative, certain groups were over-sampled. Weighted means are presented for relevant variables to account for this oversampling.
Households were asked their exact household income. Those who did not respond with an exact amount were queried using categories. In this study the household income variable includes imputed income values provided by the Independent Sector. However, excluding imputed income values leads to similar estimation results for income.
Educational attainment is measured by highest education level achieved. The mutually exclusive categories include: no high school degree, high school degree, some college, university degree, or graduate school.
Regional differences contrast with those from the whole sample. The Northeast is no longer significantly different from the West, whereas the region composed of Alaska and Hawaii is now statistically different from the West. Households from the South continue to contribute less to the environment. Also, the parameter estimate on household size is no longer statistically significant. However, the reason for examining primary decision-makers is to verify the relationship between respondent characteristics and environmental giving. The overall sample is more appropriate for examining the household characteristics.
For purposes of comparison, I also estimated price and income elasticities for charitable contributions using ordinary least squares on 2001 Giving and Volunteering data with the same explanatory variables used by Tiehen (2001). The price and income elasticities both are statistically significant and are similar to those reported by Tiehen (2001) for previous years. I estimate a price elasticity of −1.78 for 2001, similar to the 1995 price elasticity of −1.80, whereas the income elasticity estimated for 2001 is 0.60, similar to the 1995 income elasticity of 0.55. Tiehen (2001) also estimates a Tobit model with pooled cross-sections. With the 2001 data I estimate a Tobit model for total contributions, using similar explanatory variables, and find qualitatively similar results (the statistically significant parameter estimates have the same signs except for that on non-Latino Whites, which is not found to be statistically significant in the 2001 data, whereas it was positive and statistically significant in Tiehen’s pooled regression).
References
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Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Indiana State University for supporting this research through a University Research Grant. Thanks also to participants at the International Atlantic Economic Society Conference, October 6–9, 2005, New York, NY, Indiana Academy of Social Sciences Conference, and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments.
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Appendix
Appendix
Questions on Environmental Donations in 2001 Giving and Volunteering Survey
In 2000, did you and members of your household contribute money or property to or for the environment, including animal welfare? Examples include the SPCA, and programs for environmental quality and beautification.
Approximately how much money or the cash equivalent of property did you and the members of your household contribute to the environment, including animal welfare in 2000?
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Israel, D.K. Charitable Donations: Evidence of Demand for Environmental Protection?. Int Adv Econ Res 13, 171–182 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11294-007-9080-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11294-007-9080-4