Resource-Specific Generosity

This paper shows that people are less generous with money compared to other resources. In multiple dictator game studies involving allocations of fixed sums between self and other, people allocated a lower proportion of money to others compared to other resources (food, goods, space, time). This effect generalized across adult participants in France and the U.S., real and hypothetical allocations, and when people allocated one or multiple resources. On average, people allocated 36% of their endowed money to others (38% when hypothetical, 17% facing real incentives), whereas for non-monetary resources, they allocated 15 percentage-points more to others (14 percentage-points more when hypothetical, 18 percentage-points more facing real incentives). Convergent evidence from studies using different approaches (open-ended responses, correlational analysis, incentivized and hypothetical experiments) points to versatility and desirability as main drivers of the effect. These findings thus indicate a robust tendency to be less generous with monetary versus non-monetary resources and identify versatility and desirability as two key characteristics of monetary resources that make people less generous with them than with non-monetary resources.