Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Donor Coordination In Project Funding: Evidence From A Threshold Public Goods Experiment, Luca Corazzini, Paola Valbonesi, Christopher Cotton

Paola Valbonesi

We present results from an experiment with multiple public goods, where each good produces benefits only if total contributions to it reach a minimum threshold. The presence of multiple public goods makes coordination among participants more difficult, discouraging donor participation and decreasing the likelihood of any public good being effectively funded. Applied to the case of fundraising, the results show how overall donations and the number of effectively funded projects may both decrease as the total number of projects vying for funding increases. The analysis considers whether making one of the contribution options salient, either through its merits or by …