An economic study of charitable giving

Recent data from 2015 show that donations in Australia have fallen to a 30-year low. Interestingly, this is during a period when even though real GDP has increased inequality has risen. This research is a controlled study of the motivations for charitable giving and helping behaviour and how these motivations interact with external factors under different institutions. Social norms and perceptions relating to disadvantaged people can influence donor motivations. The anticipated goal is to inform how to design initiatives that influence prosocial activities such as charitable giving, redistribution, refugee intake and migrant integration, and more generally, improve the understanding of the underlying mechanisms of prosocial behavior.