Local crime and prosocial attitudes : evidence from charitable donations

Combining longitudinal postcode-level data on charitable donations made through a UK giving portal with publicly available data on local crime and neighborhood characteristics, we study the relationship between local crime and local residents’ charitable giving and we investigate the possible mechanisms underlying this relationship. An increase in local crime corresponds to a sizeable increase in the overall size of unscheduled charitable donations. This effect is mainly driven by the responses of female and gender unclassified donors. Donation responses also reflect postcode variation in socio-economic characteristics, levels of mental health, and political leanings, but mainly so for female and gender-unidentified donors.