What Makes People Give? #
March 11th, 2008 | In Worth Reading
David Leonhardt’s piece in last weekend’s New York Times Magazine is a good one, even if he doesn’t really answer that question. Consider this:
In the late 1980s, an economist named James Andreoni argued that the internal motives for giving were indeed more important than many people had acknowledged. He came up with a name for his idea — the “warm glow” theory — and it stuck. In the warm-glow view of philanthropy, people aren’t giving money merely to save the whales; they’re also giving money to feel the glow that comes with being the kind of person who’s helping to save the whales.