Natural disaster mitigation through voluntary donations in a developing country: the case of Bangladesh

This paper addresses voluntary donations in Bangladesh with a specific eye on natural disaster mitigation. We conducted a questionnaire survey of 1000 respondents in which labor and money donations to collective disaster mitigation were elicited. We characterize labor and money donations in relation to socioeconomic variables such as income, education, family structure, and occupation using bivariate probit and Tobit regressions. The analysis finds that age, family structure, education, income and occupation are important determinants for Bangladeshi people to decide between labor and money donations as well as their respective amount. The poor and less educated households with high natural resource dependence are identified to significantly contribute to overall donations via labor. The rich and more educated people with low natural resource dependence are willing to donate money and little labor, but the magnitude of donations is small. Labor and money donations exhibit the relation of substitutability with respect to most socioeconomic variables. Education and income do not positively affect overall donations in Bangladesh. This finding is in sharp contrast with the studies in USA or Europe, and illustrates that labor donation is an important channel to natural disaster mitigation that should be utilized for public betterment in developing countries.