In this registered report, we investigate (i) whether incentives affect subjects’ willingness to pay to increase and to decrease the payoff of others, (ii) whether they affect the distribution of social preference types, and (iii) whether they affect the strength and the precision of individuals’ structurally estimated social preference parameters. Using an online experiment with a general population sample, we show that the use of monetary incentives, as well as the size of the stakes, have little impact on subjects’ modal choices (descriptive analysis), as well as for the distribution of qualitatively distinct preference types in the population (clustering analysis). However, monetary incentives affect quantitative measures of the strength and the precision of social preferences. Indeed, a structural analysis reveals that the preference elicitation with merely hypothetical stakes leads to an overestimation and a less precise measurement of social preferences. Together, these results highlight that incentivizing the elicitation of social preferences is most useful when interested in quantitative estimates. For researchers interested in identifying merely qualitative preference types, however, hypothetical stakes might suffice.

There is limited research into the experiences and impact on wellbeing, of laypersons informally supporting people seeking asylum (PSA) within the United Kingdom. This study addresses this topic within the context of the Bibby Stockholm barge. An interpretivist philosophical paradigm and qualitative strategy were employed. A combination of purposive and snowball sampling was utilized in recruiting nine participants aged 50–80, six male and three female, and all of Caucasian ethnic origin. Data were collected using semi-structured one-to-one interviews and analyzed using Thematic Analysis. Three themes emerged. First, Participants situated their motivations to volunteer within the context of social justice, informed by previous life experiences, personal morals and a reaction to the sociopolitical context PSA are forced to navigate. Second, volunteers’ experiences reflected the interactions of community. To this end, community is considered as an ever-changing “machine” where processes such as welcoming, loss and belonging form the cogs, which drive its evolution. Finally, volunteers described the way their experience affected their wellbeing—the wellbeing equation. Overall, volunteers described an overwhelmingly positive experience and provide accounts of experiencing increased wellbeing. However, volunteers also faced challenges damaging to wellbeing, employing protective mechanisms to mitigate these. This relationship between volunteering with PSA and wellbeing is summarized in the development of a revised conceptual framework contextualizing the effects of volunteering on volunteer health and wellbeing. The future application of this framework across different voluntary fields may improve understanding of what it means to volunteer and thus universal volunteer retention and outcomes.

Reverse mortgage markets remain small internationally, with bequest motives frequently cited as a key reason. We develop a new two-generation lifecycle simulation model to study the role of reverse mortgages in intergenerational financial planning, particularly as a tool for families to bring forward bequests. The model incorporates parental altruism by assuming parents derive utility not only from their own consumption and housing but also from their child’s current and future financial well-being. This extends traditional bequest models, which typically consider only the wealth transferred at death. The model accounts for house price risk, interest rate risk, investment risk, wage growth, health shocks, long-term care costs, private pensions, and means-tested public pensions. Using this framework, calibrated to Australian economic and policy settings, we compare the welfare gains from bequests and early bequests (inter vivos gifts) for homeowning parents and adult children seeking to purchase their first home. The results suggest that families across a range of wealth levels can experience substantial welfare gains when the parent uses a reverse mortgage both for retirement income and to gift the adult child a first home deposit. Early bequests funded through reverse mortgages increase overall family welfare compared to preserving home equity for a bequest or using a reverse mortgage solely for the parent’s consumption, particularly for middle-wealth households. A policy experiment shows that gifting limits reduce welfare gains for some families, but have a small overall impact. These findings suggest that policies encouraging informed use of reverse mortgages could improve intergenerational financial security.

This manuscript examines how growing up with a sibling relates to prosociality and how knowledge of a partner’s sibling background may serve as a behavioral cue. In a series of experimental games, we found that individuals with siblings were significantly more likely to cooperate in stag hunt and contribute more in public goods and dictator games than only children (OC) on average. In two treatments where a sibling status cue is exogenously revealed, only-child pairs exhibited reduced prosociality. OC exhibit different empirical expectations of behavior compared to those with siblings, while generally sharing the same normative beliefs. Language AI analysis of subjects’ written perspectives on the games corroborates these patterns. We conclude that OC exhibit more context-dependent prosociality, with behavior more closely aligned with empirical expectations than normative beliefs, a pattern not observed in those with siblings.

As large language model (LLM)-based agents increasingly engage with human society, how well do we understand their prosocial behaviors? We (1) investigate how LLM agents’ prosocial behaviors can be induced by different personas and benchmarked against human behaviors and (2) introduce a social science approach to evaluate LLM agents’ decision-making. We explored how different personas and experimental framings affect these AI agents’ altruistic behavior in dictator games and compared their behaviors within the same LLM family, across various families, and with human behaviors. The findings reveal that merely assigning a human-like identity to LLMs does not produce human-like behaviors. They suggest that LLM agents’ reasoning does not consistently exhibit textual markers of human decision-making in dictator games and that their alignment with human behavior varies substantially across model architectures and prompt formulations; even worse, such dependence does not follow a clear pattern. As society increasingly integrates machine intelligence, “prosocial AI” emerges as a promising and urgent research direction in philanthropic studies.

We develop and validate a survey instrument to elicit six key economic preferences in children: undefined time preferences, risk preferences, altruism, positive reciprocity, negative reciprocity, and trust. The survey was administered to a sample of 339 nine-year-old children, for whom we also collected behavioral data through incentivized choice experiments targeting the same preferences. Our econometric analysis allows us to identify a set of 14 survey items that best predict children’s experimental behavior. For each preference, we also compare the predictive power of this 14-item validated survey to a shorter 9-item self-evaluation version. Our results demonstrate that these surveys provide a simple and reliable tool for measuring individual preferences in children – enabling researchers to account for heterogeneity when designing and evaluating policies targeting younger populations.

This article examines the link between personality traits, political attitudes and the propensity to vote in elections, using an Internet panel survey conducted in two Canadian provinces at the time of the 2008 federal election and the subsequent provincial elections. It first establishes that the two most proximate attitudes that shape one's propensity to vote are political interest and sense of civic duty. The article then look at specific personality traits (altruism, shyness, efficacy and conflict avoidance) that could affect level of political interest, civic duty and the propensity to vote in elections. In the last part of the analysis, a model is proposed and tested, according to which the impact of personality traits is indirect, being mediated by interest and duty. The article shows that the data are consistent with such an interpretation.

The present study aimed to explore underlying motivational factors of volunteerism at a special sporting event for persons with intellectual disabilities. The volunteer survey (n = 252) assessed sociodemographic characteristics, motives, satisfaction with life, psychological well-being, and affectivity of mainly intrinsically motivated volunteers versus traineeship attendees, doing a compulsory traineeship on occasion of the Innsbruck 2008 Winter Special Olympics. There was no significant variability in the motivation to volunteer scale (MVS) score between the groups. The inventory of approach and avoidance motivation (IAAM) data showed that primarily intrinsically motivated volunteers experienced higher self-gratification through their voluntary engagement. Regression analysis revealed that psychological well-being, satisfaction with life, and positive and negative affectivity was predicted by the IAAM and MVS. Individuals’ personal motives for volunteering appear to correlate with psychological well-being and affectivity and may influence prospective participation.

Most charity organizations depend on contributions from the general public, but little research is conducted on donor preferences. Do donors have geographical, recipient, or thematic preferences? We designed a conjoint analysis experiment in which people rated development aid projects by donating money in dictator games. We find that our sample show strong age, gender, regional, and thematic preferences. Furthermore, we find significant differences between segments. The differences in donations are consistent with differences in donors’ attitudes toward development aid and their beliefs about differences in poverty and vulnerability of the recipients. The method here used for development projects can easily be adapted to elicit preferences for other kinds of projects that rely on gifts from private donors.

While nonprofit organizations have traditionally been considered increasingly competing for resources, this paper mainly explores the potential mutual relationship between volunteering in sport and volunteering in culture. Drawing on 2014 data from the German Volunteer Survey, we estimated a bivariate probit model based on 27,293 observations. The findings suggested that sports and cultural volunteering were complementary activities. Thus, promoting volunteering in one of the domains positively affected volunteering in the alternative domain. Parental volunteering, religiosity, and education were primary drivers of both types of volunteering. However, differences in some determinants have also been found. For example, volunteering in culture was predominantly female, while male volunteers dominated sports.

Egoism is a pervasive trait in modern market societies that encourages people to focus upon their own self-interest above all else. Third-sector organizations, by contrast, are frequently termed “altruistic.” This essay elucidates the meaning of “altruism “ as it applies to these organizations. Moral altruism means direct concern for another’s well being—whoever that person might be. This study rejects psychological egoism as a meaningful psychological theory, and ethical egoism as a coherent moral position; it discusses empirical studies of altruism in rescuers of Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe as proof against the former form of egoism and Kant’s moral theory against the latter. The essay then argues that altruism is a form of public action in Hannah Arendt’s sense of this term. The essay concludes that third-sector organizations are altruistic insofar as they engage in public action, thereby, treating beneficiaries with respect for their individuality.