Point taken that there is no clear plateau at 30% -- it’ll be interesting to see what future data shows.
Part of the reason for us having less analysis on the change of reporting rates over time is that we did not directly incorporate this rate of change into our model. For example, the table of reporting rates was primarily used in our evaluation to test a hypothesis for why we see an increase in average giving (even assuming people are not reporting are not giving at all). Our model does not assume reporting rates don’t decline, nor does it assume the decline in reporting rates plateaus.
Instead, we investigated how average giving (which is a product of both reporting rates, and the average amount given conditional on reporting) changes over time. We saw that the decline in reporting rates is (more than) compensated by the increase in giving conditional on reporting. It could be that this will no longer remain true beyond a certain time horizon (though, perhaps it will!), but there are other arguably conservative assumptions for these long time-horizons (e.g., that giving stops at pension age, doesn’t include any legacy giving). Some of these considerations come up as we discuss why we did not assume a decay in our influence and in our limitations of our Pledge model (in the bottom of this section, right above this one).
On your final point:
Separately, I think it would be pretty reasonable to drop the pre-2011 reporting data. I think this probably represents something weird about starting up, like not collecting data thoroughly at first, and not about user behavior? I haven’t done this in my analysis above, though, because since I’m weighting by cohort size it doesn’t do very much.
Do you mean excluding it just for the purpose of analysing reporting rates over time? If so, that could well be right, and if we investigate this directly in future impact evaluations we’ll need to look into what the quality/​relevance of that data was and make a call here.
That makes sense, thanks! I think your text makes it sound like you disagree with the earlierattrition discussion, when actually it’s that giving increasing over time makes up for the attrition?
just for the purpose of analysing reporting rates over time?
Sorry, yes. I think it’s probably heavily underreported, since the very early reporting system was probably worse?
Ah, I can see what you mean regarding our text, I assume in this passage:
We want to emphasise that this data surprised us and caused us to reevaluate a key assumption we had when we began our impact evaluation. Specifically, we went into this impact evaluation expecting to see some kind of decay per year of giving. In our 2015 impact evaluation, we assumed a decay of 5% (and even this was criticised for seeming optimistic compared to EA Survey data — a criticism we agreed with at the time). Yet, what we in fact seem to be seeing is an increase in average giving per year since taking the Pledge, even when adjusting for inflation.
What you say is right: we agree there seems to be a decay in fulfilment /​ reporting rates (which is what the earlierattrition discussion was mostly about) but we just add the additional observation that giving increasing over time makes up for this.
There is a sense in which we do disagree with that earlier discussion, which is that we think the kind of decay that would be relevant to modelling the value of the Pledge is the decay in average giving over time, and at least here, we do not see a decay. But we could’ve been clearer about this; at least on my reading, I think the paragraph I quoted above conflates different sorts of ‘decay’.
Really appreciate this analysis, Jeff.
Point taken that there is no clear plateau at 30% -- it’ll be interesting to see what future data shows.
Part of the reason for us having less analysis on the change of reporting rates over time is that we did not directly incorporate this rate of change into our model. For example, the table of reporting rates was primarily used in our evaluation to test a hypothesis for why we see an increase in average giving (even assuming people are not reporting are not giving at all). Our model does not assume reporting rates don’t decline, nor does it assume the decline in reporting rates plateaus.
Instead, we investigated how average giving (which is a product of both reporting rates, and the average amount given conditional on reporting) changes over time. We saw that the decline in reporting rates is (more than) compensated by the increase in giving conditional on reporting. It could be that this will no longer remain true beyond a certain time horizon (though, perhaps it will!), but there are other arguably conservative assumptions for these long time-horizons (e.g., that giving stops at pension age, doesn’t include any legacy giving). Some of these considerations come up as we discuss why we did not assume a decay in our influence and in our limitations of our Pledge model (in the bottom of this section, right above this one).
On your final point:
Do you mean excluding it just for the purpose of analysing reporting rates over time? If so, that could well be right, and if we investigate this directly in future impact evaluations we’ll need to look into what the quality/​relevance of that data was and make a call here.
That makes sense, thanks! I think your text makes it sound like you disagree with the earlier attrition discussion, when actually it’s that giving increasing over time makes up for the attrition?
Sorry, yes. I think it’s probably heavily underreported, since the very early reporting system was probably worse?
Ah, I can see what you mean regarding our text, I assume in this passage:
What you say is right: we agree there seems to be a decay in fulfilment /​ reporting rates (which is what the earlier attrition discussion was mostly about) but we just add the additional observation that giving increasing over time makes up for this.
There is a sense in which we do disagree with that earlier discussion, which is that we think the kind of decay that would be relevant to modelling the value of the Pledge is the decay in average giving over time, and at least here, we do not see a decay. But we could’ve been clearer about this; at least on my reading, I think the paragraph I quoted above conflates different sorts of ‘decay’.