This post in pdf How generous are the wealthy? Surely wealth enables citizens to give higher amounts to charitable causes, but does wealth also make people more generous? Do the wealthy give a higher proportion of their income? Using data from the High Net Worth supplement to the 2012 wave Giving in the Netherlands Panel Survey we can answer this question.

Crowdfunding is a new model of financing public goods. In the Netherlands it has become highly visible by the cutbacks in public funding for the arts. Crowdfunding has grown exponentially in the past years, not just in projects for the arts, but also in financing commercial startups and recently also in funding for science. However, the success of projects advertised on crowdfunding platforms varies enormously.

Op de Dag van de Filantropie 2013 – het jaarlijks terugkerend evenement op de laatste donderdag van april – is dit jaar het boek ‘Geven in Nederland 2013’ gepresenteerd.

PDF of this post The Teaching Trap I did it again this week – I tried to teach students. Yes, It’s my job, and I love it. But that’s completely my own fault. If it were for the incentives I encounter in the academic institution where I work, it would be far better to not spend time on teaching at all. For my career in academia, the thing that counts most heavily is how many publications in top journals I can realize.

Dear journalists, before we embark on a journey along all too familiar landscapes, please read this. Q (Question) 1. Mr. Bekkers, you study ‘giving to charities’. How do you know whether a donation to a charity is well spent? U (Unanswer) 1. Well, I don’t, actually. Indeed my research is about giving to charities. I do not study how charities spend the funds they raise.

As of January 1, 2013, I am appointed as an extraordinary professor Social aspects of prosocial behavior at Faculty of Social Sciences at VU University Amsterdam. The chair is supported by a grant from the Van der Gaag Foundation of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) for a period of five years. In my research I will focus on the explanation of philanthropic behavior.

This note (also available in pdf here) aims to feed the discussion about how to deal with fraud and other forms of academic misconduct in the wake of the Stapel and Smeesters affair and the publication of the report by the Schuyt Commission of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences (KNAW). The recent fraud cases in psychology (the report of the Levelt committee that investigated the Stapel fraud is

Less than seven weeks after the general elections in the Netherlands – a record in the nation’s history – conservative party leader Mark Rutte and social democrat leader Diederik Samsom presented their new government coalition agreement on October 29, 2012. The agreement consists of 81 pages of policy decisions, including budget cuts amounting to $20 billion. So what’s the news for the voluntary sector in the agreement?

In veel situaties bevinden we ons in een sociaal dilemma waarin we moeten kiezen tussen ons eigen belang en het collectieve belang. Dit geldt bij uitstek in de politiek. Welke kiezers zijn geneigd tot samenwerking in sociale dilemma’s? Vlak voor de afgelopen Tweede Kamer verkiezingen verscheen er een artikel over deze vraag in de European Journal of Personality waaraan René Bekkers meewerkte samen met drie sociaal psychologen.

Two weeks away from the general elections in the Netherlands, and a little over three months away from the US elections, we are bombarded with polls. At least one everyday, sometimes more. What do the findings of these polls tell us exactly? The perennial answer that you will hear from a scientist would be: it depends. Some polls are better than others.

Update, February 28, 2018 : The Netherlands Senate (Eerste Kamer) has voted in favor of the opt-out system proposed in parliament. The vote was close: 38 senators were in favor, 36 voted against. The ministry of Health, Wellbeing and Sports announced that the law will be implemented in the summer of 2020. The law creates another natural experiment with changes in defaults, which will be interesting to monitor.