Equity vs. efficiency vs. self-interest: on the use of dictator games to measure distributional preferences

We conduct modified dictator games in which price of giving varies across choice situations, and examine responses to price changes in two contexts—one where dictators divide their own earnings, and another where they divide the earnings of others. Varying the price of giving allows us to decompose social preferences into two components: the level of altruism when the price of giving is one, and the willingness to reduce aggregate payoffs to enhance equity. Changing the source of a dictator’s budget impacts her decisions because it affects the weight that she places on others’ payoffs. However, we find no impacts on the willingness to trade off equity and efficiency.     

An Experimental Examination of US Individual Donors’ Information Needs and Use

This paper adopts an internet‐based experiment to investigate whether and how individual donors use nonprofit organizations’ financial and nonfinancial information when making their donation decisions. Using undergraduate students in the United States (US) to proxy for individual donors, our results indicate that individual donors are more likely to acquire nonfinancial information, such as nonprofit organizations’ goals, outcomes, programs and missions, than financial information. Donors integrate nonfinancial information into their decisions as their actual donations are significantly correlated with such information. Our results also indicate that while individual donors acquire financial efficiency measures, including the program expense ratio and fundraising expense ratio, they do not seem to integrate such information into their decisions as their actual donations are not significantly correlated with the efficiency information. This study contributes to the nonprofit literature and research domain focusing on charitable giving and donor preferences.     

New development: New global health care PPP developments—a critique of the success story

Health care public–private partnerships (PPPs), where clinical services as well as infrastructure are delivered by the private sector, are coming under the spotlight as governments seek to achieve value for money in health budgets. Existing examples have been widely reported as successful. However, this article urges caution as a closer look at the evidence shows that handing over control of service delivery to the private sector is difficult to monitor and evaluate, carries cost implications which remain largely unquantified and can create additional risk.     

Self-brand connections: The role of attitude strength and autobiographical memory primes

According to the self-brand connection (SBC) construct, brand associations are used to construct one's self or to communicate one's self to others [Escalas JE. Narrative processing: building connections between brands and the self. unpublished dissertation 1996; Duke University.]. Study 1 reveals that: (1) SBCs significantly influence brand evaluations and attitude strength; (2) females exhibit stronger SBCs overall relative to their male counterparts; and (3) higher levels of SBCs impact attitude strength particularly for females in response to the gendered brand studied here — a sports organization, the WNBA. Study 2 focused on a non-gendered brand. The results showed that consumer fans who identified with the in-group (the home team) reported higher levels of SBCs than those who identified with the out-group. Finally, when autobiographical memory primes are presented from the perspective of the in-group, SBCs are higher than when these memory primes are presented from the perspective of an out-group.     

Alternative measurement approaches to consumer values: The list of values and the rokeach value survey

Two methods of measuring consumer values, the List of Values and the Rokeach Value Survey, are compared. Both involve some social desirability responding but both have convergent, discriminant, and empirical validity for consumer research. The List of Values may be preferable for some types of research because it detects more daily influence in people's lives and because it is simpler to administer.