The effect of ethnicity in a giving situation - students versus seniors

Abstract: Today's recognition of Stockholm as a multi-ethnic society entails that people's attitudes towards diversity in terms of ethnicity is of social importance. This paper examines the effect of ethnicity in a giving situation where students and seniors are compared. An experiment is conducted, where the respondents are allowed to allocate a sum of money between themselves and two recipients of different ethnicity. Our results propose that there is no significant difference in giving dependent on ethnicity for neither students nor seniors. However, the students make higher monetary donations than the seniors overall, which in result provides one statistically significant difference between students and seniors when distributing money to a person with foreign background. We are analyzing our results primarily through economic theories with other relevant theories as complements. Lastly, we suggest areas for future research.