And more broadly, do market participants, such as investors and consumers, differ from donors in the ways in which they prioritize monetary gains and the promotion of social goals?

This project attempts to answer these questions with evidence from an experiment conducted on 279 participants that involved real monetary gains for participants. Our empirical analysis provides the following four main results. First, on average, investors are willing to forgo some monetary gains in order to promote social interests. Second, individuals are willing to forgo greater amounts when consuming and making donations than when investing. Third, whereas most investors are willing to forgo gains to promote social interests, a significant percentage of investors (32% in our study) have a strong preference for maximizing monetary gains, and are unwilling to forgo even very small amounts to advance any social goals. Fourth, there is significant heterogeneity in individuals’ willingness to forgo in each of the three channels (investment, consumption and donation), which is related to their political affiliation, gender and income. Our evidence suggests that Democrats, women and higher-income participants tended to forgo more and greater amounts compared to conservatives, men and lower-income participants, though these relationships vary with the cause in question. These findings have important implications for the current debate regarding corporate social responsibility, and for the actions of corporate executives and investment managers.