2019 Data (Information)

Examining charitable giving in real-world online donations: DATA

Sisco, Matthew Ryan; Weber, Elke U.

These datasets can be used to reproduce the findings in the paper cited below. All of the code needed to replicate the analyses in the paper is included in the main Supplementary Information document linked to the paper.

Any use of these data must cite the paper: Sisco, M.R., & Weber, E.U. (2019) Examining charitable giving in real-world online donations. Nature Communications.

Paper abstract: The current study uses big data to study prosocial behavior by analyzing donations made on the GoFundMe platform. In a dataset of more than $44 million in online donations, we find that 21% were made while opting to be anonymous to the public, with survey results indicating that 11% of these anonymous donations (2.3% of all donations) are not attributable to any egoistic goal. Additionally, we find that donors gave significantly more to recipients who had the same last name as them. We find evidence that men and women donated more when more donors of the opposite sex were visible on the screen at the time of donating. Our results suggest that men and women were both significantly affected by the average donation amounts visible at the time of their decisions, and men were influenced more. We find that women expressed significantly more empathy than men in messages accompanying their donations.