Substitution of social concerns under the Covid-19 pandemic

Think tanks and political leaders have raised concerns about the implications that the Covid-19 response and reconstruction might have on other social objectives that were setting the international agenda before the Covid-19 pandemic. We present experimental evidence for eight consecutive weeks during April-May 2020 for Austria, testing the extent to which Covid-19 concerns might substitute other social concerns such as the climate crisis or the protection of vulnerable sectors of the society. We measure behavior in a simple donation task where participants receive e3 that they can distribute between themselves and different charities. While participants in one treatment have the opportunity to donate, if any, to eight different charities including a rich set of social concerns (Baseline), participants in a second treatment can choose to donate, if any, to the same charities and, in addition, to the Covid-19 Solidarity Response Fund for the World Health Organization (Covid-19). In a third treatment, participants can only decide on distributing the e3 between themselves and the Covid-19 Solidarity Response Fund (Covid-19 Only). Our results show that introducing the Covid-19 Solidarity Response Fund does not significantly change aggregate donations (donations represent 76.3% of endowment in Baseline and 70.2% in Covid-19, t(584) = 1.938, p = 0.053, n = 585). But, given positive donations to the Covid19 Solidarity Response Fund, this entails significantly lower donations to the other eight charities (76.3% in Baseline and 60.8% in Covid-19, t(584) = 5.868, p < 0.001, n = 585). Moreover, our results point to a high support to the WHO Covid-19 Fund: In the treatment where the WHO Covid-19 Fund is the only available recipient, participants donate about 50% of their endowment (Covid-19 Only), while in the treatment where it is one out of nine recipients, donations are still 9.5% of endowment (Covid-19) . Overall, our results indicate that donations to diverse social concerns are partially substituted by donations to the Covid-19 fund; yet, this substitution is far from replacing all other social concerns. 6556 Charitable donation.