Social Information and Charitable Giving: An artefactual field experiment with young children and adolescents

Abstract

A growing literature in economics examines the development of preferences among children and adolescents. We combine a repeated dictator game with treatments that either provides participants with information about the average behavior of others or not. In a sample of 384 children aged 5-17, we find an increase in donations until the age of 13-14, but not beyond. We find no effect of social information on average donation behavior in any of the studied age-groups, but do find effects on the distributions of donations.