"The Science of Giving" and why I decided to apply for a doctoral course / 『寄付の科学』と博士後期課程に出願した理由

This is the book which gave me motivation to apply for a doctoral course.

"The Science of Giving: Experimental Approaches to the Study of Charity"



Edited by Dr. Daniel M. Oppenheimer and Dr. Christopher Y Olivola, this book features many topics on charitable giving from scientific point of view. Before I found this book in Google books, I was at a loss where to start my research on donor satisfaction. In Japan, there were (and are) surprisingly scarce search results about "寄付者満足度(donor satisfaction)". So I was strongly attracted by the article "Model of the Value of Giving to Others Compared to the Value of Having More for Oneself, Implications for Fundraisers Seeking to Maximize Donor Satisfaction" written by Dr. Michal Ann Strahilevitz.

I got an idea from this article that fundraisers can analyse satisfaction of donors by using value functions. For example, law of diminishing marginal utility should be considered when fundraisers accept major gifts. Of course, there are some basic assumptions to apply value functions in a real world setting.

I cannot help reading other articles on charitable/philanthropic giving and thinking about my research questions. Finally I decided to change my career partly and to apply a doctoral course in Graduate School of Management, Kyoto University while working as a fundraiser.

『寄付の科学』と題されたこの本は、私が博士課程に出願すると決めるきっかけになった本です。
"The Science of Giving: Experimental Approaches to the Study of Charity"



あまりに「寄付者満足度」という単語についての検索結果が少ない日本の現状を知って途方に暮れていたとき、この本が非常に大きなヒントをくれました。それ以来、他の論文を読み漁ることをやめられず、また自分のリサーチクエスチョンが頭から離れず、最終的にファンドレイザーとして働きながら博士課程に進むしかないと決断するに至りました。

"Eight Mechanisms that Drive Charitable Giving" 寄付を促進する８つのメカニズム

This week, I am going to pick up my favorite article on fundraising. Just reading the abstract of this article will be beneficial for practitioners. It covers more than 500 articles from a variety of disciplines and describes the eight mechanisms that drive charitable giving. Since it is published in 2007, you should read more recent reviews to cover new articles in last twelve years. Nonetheless, this was one of  very good starting points of fundraising research for me.

According to the article, there are eight mechanisms which drive charitable giving:
(a)awareness of need;
(b)solicitation;
(c)costs and benefits;
(d)altruism;
(e)reputation;
(f)psychological benefits;
(g)values;
(h)efficacy.

This is a review of papers that contained empirical analysis of charitable giving. Most of the studies were conducted in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Canada. After reading this article, I was more interested in the charitable giving in other areas where this article did not cover. My interest is the difference of optimal strategy in potential charitable/philanthropic giving market.

For more information, please refer the website below.
https://understandingphilanthropy.wordpress.com/

The authors are Dr.René Bekkers and Dr.Pamala Wiepking. I really thank these two distinguished scholars for giving me a huge insight.

Dr. Bekkers has a twitter account. Dr. Wiepking is a co-author of "The Palgrave Handbook of Global Philanthropy". I would like to tackle this book in near future. 



本日取り上げるのはこの論文。500以上の論文を学際的にレビューした大変な労作です。

これによると、寄付を促進する8つの要素は、

(a)ニーズの認識
(b)寄付の呼びかけ
(c)費用と便益
(d)利他性
(e)評判
(f)心理的便益
(g)価値
(h)有効性

とのこと。実はこうした研究が米国のファンドレイジングにおいて十分に活かされているわけでもないようで、上記論文の中で「この本はファンドレイジングの実務についての本だが、科学的な研究を全く引用していない」などと指摘されているケースも出てきます。

掘っても掘ってもすごい学者、すごい論文が出てくる海外のフィランソロピー研究、おそるべし。

日本のファンドレイジング教育は米国のテキストをベースになされることが多いと思いますが、そのテキストが科学的な研究に立脚しているかどうか、立脚していたとしても市場環境の違い（上記論文は米国、英国、オランダ、カナダの論文を基に書かれている）を考慮しているか、というと悩ましいところ。

かくいう自分も、かつては経験論（年数だけは2000年からなのでわりと長いのですが）をマーケティングで補強した程度の知識でファンドレイジングを語ってきたわけで、反省しきりです。もっと勉強しよう、と思います。

Charitable giving: Handbook of Public Economics, Vol. 5 寄付研究についてのレビュー論文

Handbook of Public Economics, Vol. 5 contains a chapter "Charitable Giving" by Prof. James Andreoni and Prof. A. Abigail Payne. According to this chapter, the importance and popularity of research on charitable giving is evidenced by a number of recent review articles. This article itself is also a review published in 2013, which focuses on important contributions since 2006. There are four approaches in charitable giving research during this time period. Since there are little number of review articles in this theme in Japan, I could not restrain my excitement and felt great appreciation to the authors.



The first approach of charitable giving research is to look at giving as a simple individual economic decision. This seemed to be a natural starting point.

The second approach is to think of giving as a strategic interaction with many actors, such as donors, charity organizations, government and foundations, involved. This should be a familiar view for marketers, for it sees charitable sector as a market.

The third approach is to understand giving as social exchange. In this section, "The power of the Ask" is pointed out. The Ask for gift is an important role for fundraisers.

The last and newest approach is to recognize giving as a response to empathic, moral, or cultural urges. Maybe a section named "Is fundraising Bad for Society?" is shocking for fundraisers in Japan.

Personally I am interested in the difference between Charity and Philanthropy in each approaches. Because, as a marketer, I recognize that these two concepts require totally different communication strategy for prospect donors. This review seemed an essential literature for fundraisers and marketers like me, who wants to understand giving more deeply.

寄付について深く知りたい、というファンドレイザーやマーケターに強くおすすめできる総合的なレビュー論文がこの本の「Charitable giving」という章です。50ページで、2006年からの寄付研究がレビューされています。

これまでの研究について４つのアプローチに分けて論じています。

The Bright and Dark Sides of Altruism 利他性の光と闇

Today I read this article by Avner Ben-Ner and Fangtingyu Hu in the book "The Economics of Philanthropy". As they pointed out in the article, the bright side of Altruism is more familiar than the dark side. I, as a fundraiser, feel uneasy when looking at the dark side of altruism directly. However, it is necessary for we fundraisers to recognize negative effect of charitable giving and volunteer if we consider ethics and sustainability of our profession.

Apart from uneasyness as a fundraiser, I really enjoyed reading this article. It is clear that self-serving altruism or "warm glow" may cause oversupply of donation. Moral licensing theory is another thing I got interested in this article. Regading particularistic, parochial, and discriminatory altruism, there seemed to be an important implication for fundraisers whose strategy and activity may ignore the negative effect of charitable and philanthropic giving.

When I found this book at the Kyoto university library, I was so excited. I hope to be a scholar who is able to contribute to this research field someday.

ファンドレイザーは自分の仕事を「利他性を喚起する仕事」とみなして誇りを持っていることも多いと思いますが、当然ながら利他性にはネガティブな面もあります。"The Economics of Philanthropy"に収録されている"The Bright and Dark Sides of Altruism "というこの記事は、これまでの研究を踏まえて利他性のポジティブな面とネガティブな面をコンパクトにレビューしているものです。研究者だけでなく、ファンドレイジングの実務者にもぜひ読んでもらいたい内容でした。

このテーマで、日本語で無料で読める飯田高先生の記事も、下記にご紹介しておきます。私はこの記事で興味を持ち、英語文献の方に当たりました。
https://jww.iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp/jss/pdf/jss6702_023048.pdf