How a team-based approach boosts charitable lending

ANN ARBOR?Charitable lenders who belong to a team provide significantly more loans than those on their own, according to new studies led by economists and computer scientists at the University of Michigan. The researchers say the findings have implications for charitable giving as well. The project team, which also include researchers from the National University of Singapore and Kidaptive, studied the behavior of more than 60,000 members of the online lending community Kiva. Kiva matches citizen lenders with low-income entrepreneurs in developing countries. Loans are zero-interest. Since 2008, the site has allowed members to create and join teams, and it aims to spark competition by posting team stats on a leaderboard. The researchers say team membership appears not to simply correlate with greater contribution, but to outright cause it.