The Kindness Ripple: How Sharing Donation Data Can Spark Generosity
"Uncover the surprising ways that cleverly revealing donation information can transform communities and boost public good initiatives."
Imagine a village opera, a cherished tradition in southern China, where the community comes together to celebrate custom and religion. Funding these events once meant equal shares from all villagers. Over time, this evolved, with families deciding how much to give, leading to varied contributions. To honor generosity, organizers began publishing a list on an LED screen, showcasing names and donations—but setting the right threshold for publication has always been tricky.
This simple act of sharing information, reasonable or not, sparks conversation. Villagers, aware of how they're perceived, might adjust their behavior if they feel they've created a negative impression. It's a microcosm of a larger question: How can we foster cooperation, and what role does transparency play?
Social dilemmas are everywhere. Despite our inherent selfishness, cooperation thrives, sparking endless research. The public goods game (PGG) is a popular model for studying this, where individuals secretly choose to contribute to a common pool or not. Publishing donation information can foster cooperation if done correctly.
The Power of the Donation List
In the classic PGG model, individuals decide whether to privately invest tokens into a common pool. This investment is then multiplied, and the resulting public good is distributed equally. However, this creates a dilemma: those who don't contribute (defectors) still benefit, undermining cooperation. This is where the clever handling of a donation list comes in.
- Sharing Wisely: Donation list affects individual’s self-assessment and thus affects their behavior, therefore openness and familiarity of the situation, the evaluation ability of the audience, the interpersonal relationship and many other elements have impacts on the individuals' self-assessment.
- Gossip's Role: Verbal communication is an important way to transfer social information, this makes gossip an efficient social control mechanism.
Transparency Done Right
Publishing donation information incompletely promotes cooperation, leading to a more harmonious community. By sharing donation data strategically, we can foster a sense of collective responsibility and encourage greater participation in initiatives. The decision of threshold becomes very simple when community analyze the mean of the last donations and use this mean as threshold. If decision makers follow a well-constructed method then individual will have a increased participation in the community. This in turn gives decision makers a better way to invest in new public goods projects.