Great turnout from ECU students and faculty at this year's WRRI workshop. Lively discussion between UNC system researchers focused on water resource management in our state.
Wonderful visit to Oberlin College /
Woman’s Best Friend: Field Experiment Evidence of Charitable Giving and Canine Companions
Jake Hochard, Greg Howard, Yuanhao Li, Kayla Clark, John Whitehead
Dogs, domesticated for over 20,000 years and often referred to as "Man’s Best Friend", are used increasingly for service in public settings. While controlled interactions with dogs have been associated with prosocial behaviors, 155 million Americans remain fearful of the 89 million household dogs in the United States. Yet, no study has tested the implications of non-service dogs, or those with unreliable service certification, on behavior in the public. Teaming with the Salvation Army during the holiday season, we tested if the presence of a non-service dog at a bell ringing station affected donations. Evidence from over 14,000 shoppers and 1,700 donations reveals would-be donors are deterred by a dog’s presence. We also find that female bell ringers receive fewer donations than their male counterparts. Together, though, a female handler of a dog offsets both the dog’s deterrence effect and the gender-donation penalty. Dash cam video footage and parking lot collection of over 1,000 license plates are combined into an unprecedented dataset to examine the socioeconomic and behavioral determinants of charitable giving and associated gender-solicitor effects. Better understanding the impact of dogs on charitable behavior may inform the conversation on a national clearinghouse for service animal certifications and, when leveraged carefully, may inform increased partnerships between animal shelters and donation-funded non-profit organizations.
2018 ECU Coastal Scholar Award Recipient /
https://news.ecu.edu/2018/02/22/researchers-saluted/
Photo by Cliff Hollis, ECU News.
"The Impacts of Climate Change on the Poor in Disadvantaged Regions" now available in Review of Environmental Economics and Management /
Our new Editor's Choice article is now available!
https://academic.oup.com/reep/article/12/1/26/4835833
The Charitable Giving Value of People's Best Friend /
Jacob Hochard (Department of Economics, ICSP), Greg Howard (Department of Economics), Kayla Clark (School of Art and Design), John Whitehead (Visiting Troxler Professor Department of Economics) and Yuanhao Li (Norwegian School of Economics) partnered with the Salvation Army during the holiday season to conduct a local field experiment. The Troxler-funded study, The Charitable Giving Value of People's Best Friend, was conducted from November 27th-29th and tested whether the presence of dogs at bell ringing stations increased donations at a major retail store in Greenville, North Carolina.
2017 Southern Economic Association AERE Sessions /
Beyond the Bonus: Reuniting and Adapting to Fragmented Habitat for Species Recovery
EPA Project Announced! /
CBEAR-MAAP Conference (US Fish and Wildlife Service National Conservation Training Center in Shepardstown, WV) /
Beyond the Bonus: Reuniting and Adapting to Fragmented Habitat for Species Conservation
