Publications

Journal Article

Despite high demand and resource limitations, humanitarian organizations typically do not share resources and/or coordinate in the field. While coordination enhances operational performance and saves costs, the general perception is that it dilutes the media attention that individual organizations might receive, and negatively influences their future donation income.

In this paper, the authors empirically unveil the impact of media exposure and operational performance on the donations obtained by humanitarian organizations. Then, based on the empirical results, the authors develop a stylized model to characterize the structure of preferred coordination policies with respect to an organization's funding source and main mandate.

These findings shed light on the incentives and dynamics that drive behaviors in humanitarian operations and provide insights for policy makers on designing and implementing mechanisms that encourage humanitarian coordination.