Power Distribution Within Government–Nonprofit Partnerships and Individual Charitable Decisions

Abstract

This paper postulates that the power distribution within a government–nonprofit partnership (GNP) shapes individual charitable decisions (e.g., giving or volunteering) by influencing the perceived effectiveness of a GNP and the perceived needs of the involved nonprofit. Empirically, we designed three vignettes (i.e., government‐led GNP, co‐led GNP, and nonprofit‐led GNP) and randomly distributed them among 907 American respondents recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) in a recent experiment. Analyses provide consistent evidence to support the inhibitive effect of nonprofit domination in the decision‐making of a GNP on voluntary contributions.