Support for Climate Migrants or Rohingya? How Bangladeshis Donate to Charities

• In Event: Public Opinion on Climate Policies

Abstract

Individuals respond to policy challenges in many ways: as citizens who vote, as consumers who purchase goods and services, and as philanthropists who support charitable causes. When faced with multiple causes they deem worthy of their support, which ones do they prioritize?

We examine if citizens of Bangladesh are willing to prioritize the climate crisis over another humanitarian crisis in terms of their charitable support. Often charity is supposed to be the domain of the rich and powerful. In reality, the poor also help charitable causes even within their limited means.

We focus on charitable giving by poor citizens who constitute the majority of the population in most countries. There is also research that reveals that charitable giving may reveal political priorities and the importance individuals attach to different policy issues.

Bangladesh faces a severe urban migration problem. First, due to a lack of economic opportunities, there is a large-scale migration from rural to urban areas. These migrants live in cramped conditions: 60% of Dacca’s 15 million inhabitants live in slums and 2,000 migrants arrive every day.

Bangladesh is also experiencing the arrival of Rohingya refugees (co-religionists for most Bangladeshis) who have settled in southern Bangladesh after fleeing religious persecution in Myanmar. More than 1 million refugees have fled to Bangladesh, often with horrific accounts of violence.

Bangladesh is extremely vulnerable to climate change. Its 150 million inhabitants are cramped in the delta of three waterways, often in areas less than 20 feet above sea level. Bangladesh is already experiencing the devastating impacts of sea-level rise, leading to increased internal migration to cities. The World Bank estimates that about 1 million people will migrate within the country in 2020 alone due to the climate crisis.

All migrants require substantial humanitarian assistance, especially healthcare. Given the widespread failure of the government to provide basic public services, local charities have stepped in, often generating a substantial portion of their funds from local communities, as opposed to international aid.

We will deploy a survey experiment (administered face-to-face in the local Bengali language) to assess support for a humanitarian charity among slum dwellers of Dhaka, Bangladesh.

We seek to assess individuals’ willingness to support a (fictitious) charity that provides healthcare to refugees or migrants. In terms of survey logistics, we will randomly allocate respondents to one of three groups. In the control group, we will describe the problems refugees/migrants face and how the charity will assist them. But we will not provide information about recipients and why they migrated.

In the first treatment group, we will inform the respondents that the charity serves climate refugees. In the second treatment group, we will inform the respondents that the charity serves Rohingya refugees. We will compare the average willingness to donate 100 takas (local currency) of the two treatment groups to that of the control group. Overall, findings from this survey experiment will provide new insights into how individuals in developing countries, especially the poor, prioritize support for climate refugees in relation to co-religionists persecuted in a neighboring country.

Authors

• Rachel Castellano

• Nives Dolsak, University of Washington

• Aseem Prakash, University of Washington