Who gives a Dime? Experimental evidence on first-movers in fundraising mechanisms

Charitable fundraising campaigns increasingly use first-movers and visibility tools to exploit social image and strategic concerns, but such tools may also induce pressure to give and crowd out intrinsic motivation. We investigate in a laboratory experiment how the timing structure affects giving behavior across three fundraising mechanisms: a voluntary contribution mechanism, a lottery and an all-pay auction. We ask whether observing a first-mover affects individual contributions and public good provision level in a 2x3 within- and between-subject design where first-movers are determined at random in each group. We use the strategy method to enhance the number of observations and to elicit complete contribution profiles of second-movers. This allows us to identify different types of (conditional) cooperators. Additionally, first-order beliefs provide evidence on the consistency of conditional attitudes and elicited beliefs with contributions of the different types. Finally, we let participants vote for their preferred mechanism at the end of the experiment.