Pro-Social Behaviour in Times of Crisis and Uncertainty : An Empirical Study of Local COVID-19 Restrictions and the Donation Rate in the Norwegian Recycling Lottery

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the relationship between local COVID-19 restrictions and the donation rate in the Norwegian recycling lottery, employing donations to the lottery as a proxy for pro-social behaviour. The thesis aims to study whether the enforcement of local restrictions has an impact on the donation rate and if separate categories of restrictions impact the donation rate differently. Additionally, the thesis explores whether the effect on the donation rate varies based on the duration of the local restrictions enforcement and whether there is a long-term impact after their termination. The final dataset consists of 461,115 observations that contain data on recycling and the enforcement of local COVID-19 restrictions. The panel dataset also comprises information on municipal affiliation, total transactions, and infection numbers. Regressions on the data are conducted with fixed effects estimation with week and store fixed effects, and total transactions and the infection rate per 100,000 as control variables. The findings reveal a positive effect of local COVID-19 restrictions on the donation rate. The results suggest that the enforcement of local restrictions will increase the donation rate by approximately 0.25 percentage points. Certain categories of restrictions, for instance, those related to travel and the ban on serving alcohol, are also found to have a greater effect than other categories. Furthermore, the thesis reveals that the duration of the local restrictions has a significant and increasing effect from the second week on. There is no evidence that local restrictions have a long-term impact on the donation rate. An additional survey conducted on donation motivation demonstrates that there are diverse motives for contributing to the recycling lottery. Although local restrictions are found to have a positive effect on the donation rate, it remains undetermined whether these restrictions in fact have an impact on pro-social behaviour.