A Model of Factors Influencing the Charitable Donations of American Citizens to Disaster Relief Efforts

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: The past years have seen several natural disasters of high magnitude. Charitable opportunities are in no way unique to natural disasters, but events like the 2010 Haitian earthquake, the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and the 2011 East Africa drought capture global attention. What conditions tend to improve the likelihood that a given person will donate? What conditions tend to disincline an individual to donate? Funding received is not always proportional to the number of people affected. For example, according to the UN's OCHA tracking service, 4 weeks after its earthquake Haiti had received $1.549 billion, and 6 weeks after the famine was first declared in Somalia the Horn of Africa had received $1.6 billion. However, 12.4 million people were estimated to be in need in the Horn of Africa, whereas 3 million was the Red Cross's estimate for Haiti (Givewell, "Ratings of Disaster Relief Charities One Year after the Earthquake"). So, Haiti received about 4 times more per capita. Foresight of such circumstances would allow these agencies to distribute their resources even more effectively in the future. OBJECTIVE: The main goal of this project is to develop a predictive model for the probability that an American citizen will donate to at least one