Effectiveness of Charitable Lottery Design: Experimental Evidence from the Czech Republic and Russia
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2012 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Ekonomický časopis / Journal of Economics |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Economy |
| Keywords | Public goods; experiment; lottery; free riding |
| Description | The paper presents the results of a multicultural economic experiment that took place in two Central and Eastern European countries: the Czech Republic (CR) and Russia (Ru). The experiment was focused on studying the behaviour of Eastern European university students in a situation simulating a charitable lottery. The experiment was to a great extent inspired by the experimental design of Dale (2004). In accordance with Dale’s study, we examined the effectiveness of various lottery structures. From Dale’s experimental design, we adopted the fixed-prize lottery (raffle) structure, in which tickets are sold for chances of winning a prize. The more tickets one buys, the more probable is for him to win. We introduced a new scheme (lottery structure) – the modified fixed-prize lottery - within which the chance of winning was equal for all contributing individuals (and hence independent of the amount of their actual non-zero contribution). Our results show that such a scheme is not efficient, that is, that individuals contribute considerably less under the modified fixed-prize lottery than under the classic raffle. Comparisons of results acquired in three different countries (CR, Ru and the United States (US)) enabled us to find certain differences in individuals’ behaviours that could be qualified as “country effects”. In particular, under the fixed-prize lottery, we observed considerably lower contributions by the Czech and Russian participants compared to their American colleagues. As far as the behaviours of the Czech and Russian students is concerned, the differences were significant only in the modified fixed-prize lottery, where the Russian students contributed considerably more than the Czech ones. |