Viewers like you: Community norms and contributions to public broadcasting

Economic theory suggests that public television stations should not receive the level of member support they do, because of the problem of free riding. Yet, many people do contribute, so the research question considered here is why do people contribute to public broadcasting when rational choice theory predicts they will not? My hypothesis is that "norms of cooperation" govern the behavior of individuals. "Norms" are expectations about action held by an individual, or by others in the community. One can measure the levels of these norms using cooperative activities, such as volunteering or voting. I provide two separate tests of this hypothesis. First, I analyze aggregate-level data. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting provided data on how much each public television station earned from member contributions in 1993, and the number of contributors to each station. Using television market area data, I analyze which "community" factors lead to higher total member contributions to each station. These data also allow me to test competing public finance theories such as whether government funding crowds out private giving and whether large groups encourage free riding. In this part of the analysis, I find that norms explain more and higher contributions. Norms also provide theoretical underpinning to the fact that smaller groups seem better able to provide public goods. To provide further confidence in the norms finding, I commissioned a telephone survey of public television viewers in three television designated market areas. The survey employs a case-control sampling design. The givers and non-givers are compared to each other to discover those attributes which may lead to contributions. The survey results are strongly supportive of the "norms" theory. For example, all else equal, individuals who contribute are more likely to participate in cooperative activities such as voting and volunteering. Measuring community cooperation using property crime rates, those individuals who live in communities with higher levels of cooperation are also more likely to contribute. This dissertation builds on a developing area of political science research: "norms of cooperation" have tremendous predictive power in determining whether a person will participate in the solution of collective action problems.