Crowding-Out in Voluntary Work: A Randomized Experiment on the Effect of Monetary Incentives on the Motivation of Altruistic Behaviour

Sammanfattning: The current refugee crisis Europe is facing has proven how important volunteers are, raising the question: what motivates voluntary work? This study investigates whether the theories on the crowding-out effect of monetary rewards found in the context of blood donation, mainly those presented by Titmuss and Bénabou and Tirole, can be generalized for altruistic behaviour and applied on voluntary work with refugees. A randomized experiment using an Internet survey was conducted on students to study the effect of monetary incentives on the supply of volunteering tutors for refugee children. The study also tested whether there are any differences in volunteering behaviour between the genders as previous studies on gender differences in prosocial behaviour have produced varying results. The experiment found no support for the crowding-out effect, not even when separating the sample by gender, although women were found to be more inclined to help in general. These results indicate that altruism is context dependent, resulting in a risk when generalizing voluntary work and donation behaviour as altruistic behaviour. Instead, they should be considered as two separate acts driven by different degrees of intrinsic, extrinsic and reputational motivation and incentivized accordingly. However, due to limitations of the experimental design, more studies are needed before any general conclusions for voluntary work can be drawn.