Behavioral biases in charitable giving, installment #1637

People pay more attention to the number of people killed in a natural disaster than to the number of survivors when deciding how much money to donate to disaster relief efforts, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

…Their model estimated that about $9,300 was donated per person killed in a given disaster. The number of people affected in the disasters, on the other hand, appeared to have no influence on the amount donated to relief efforts.

The summary article is here, and the gated published version is here.  I do not see an ungated copy.  Here is a related paper (pdf) on how disasters drive aid decisions.

For the pointer I thank Bill Benzon.