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Category: Project

Description: Are private donors willing to replace cuts in government funding? We conducted a survey experiment (n=2,458) to examine how information about government funding affect decisions to donate money to a large charitable organization in the Netherlands. Providing information about actual budget cuts increases the number of donors, attracting donors from other organizations but also some who otherwise would not have donated. Exploratory analyses reveal that the magnitude of the information effect is stronger for citizens with lower levels of empathic concern. The conclusions of this article show that policy information not only shapes attitudes, but also civic engagement outside the political sphere.