Free Riding Research in Environmental Donation under Different Social Information

Because of the characteristics of public goods, free-riding problems happen in the process of donation. Although scholars have studies the influence of social donation information and reward on free-riding behavior in donation, the effect of the combination of these two is rarely studied, especially in the environmental donation. Therefore, this paper introduces different social donation information and different types of reward into the research of free-riding issues in environmental donation, and designs 12 experiments under different situations. By analyzing the change of participants' free-riding behavior, we want to find the most effective way to restrain free-riding behavior in enviromnental donation. This study found that social donation information higher than donation baseline, which combined with materials award is the most effective way. Also, this study found that the combination of social donation information lower than donation baseline and mental award will aggravate free-riding problem in environmental donation. Additionally, to some extent, age and salary will influence free-riding behavior. Therefore, this research has both theoretical and practical meanings.