Modelling Church Collections in Nigeria

The study adds to the literature on religion behaviour from economics perspective using a dataset from a typical church s treasury statement in Nigeria. Acknowledging the addictive characteristic of religion, we estimate reduced form equation for church collection. The outcome of the empirical findings from the estimated model depicts the importance of some days in certain months of the year as captured by the dummies like January, April and December. The dummies for these identified months appear significant for church collection of tithes and other loose-plate offerings. The reasons for this are not far-fetched. The exclusion of any of these variables in the model smoothens out the effects on other variables by increasing their levels of significance. Therefore, the sustenance of the Nigerian churches rests essentially on how well they can harness resources from their various church services particularly during the festive periods.