How charitable of you
When doing good is bad in gift giving: Mis-predicting appreciation of socially responsible gifts
Lisa Cavanaugh, Francesca Gino & Gavan Fitzsimons
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, forthcoming
Abstract:
Gifts that support a worthy cause (i.e., “gifts that give twice”), such as a charitable donation in the recipient’s name, have become increasingly popular. Recipients generally enjoy the idea of these gifts, which not only benefit others in need but also make individuals feel good about themselves. But do givers accurately predict appreciation of these types of gifts? Across three studies, we show that gift givers mis-predict appreciation for socially responsible gifts, and that their mis-predictions depend on the nature of their relationship to the recipient. Drawing on research on affective forecasting and perspective taking, we propose and find that givers overestimate how much distant others appreciate socially responsible gifts because they focus more than recipients on the symbolic meaning of the gift. Critically, givers have the most to gain from distant others, in terms of strengthened relationship quality, by making better gift choices.
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Giving behavior of millionaires
Paul Smeets, Rob Bauer & Uri Gneezy
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 25 August 2015, Pages 10641–10644
Abstract:
This paper studies conditions influencing the generosity of wealthy people. We conduct incentivized experiments with individuals who have at least €1 million in their bank account. The results show that millionaires are more generous toward low-income individuals in a giving situation when the other participant has no power, than in a strategic setting, where the other participant can punish unfair behavior. Moreover, the level of giving by millionaires is higher than in any other previous study. Our findings have important implications for charities and financial institutions that deal with wealthy individuals.
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Friends Asking Friends for Charity: The Importance of Gifts and Audience
Marco Castillo, Ragan Petrie & Clarence Wardell
George Mason University Working Paper, September 2015
Abstract:
Friends can influence many aspects of one’s life, including giving behavior. Using data on 10,000 donors from a field experiment with an online giving community, we examine the effectiveness and underlying motivations for donors to ask friends via social media to give to a charity. Asking a friend in front of his friends is the most effective way to fundraise. Our results suggest that offering a small monetary incentive to donors to ask a friend this way pays for itself by returning about $2 for every $1 spent and could be a potential new fundraising tool for charities. Social pressure, rather than information efficiency, appears to be an important mechanism behind the success of social media in fundraising. However, social pressure is costly and donors are reluctant to use it on their friends. Providing donors with a “gift” for the friend increases solicitation rates.
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Self-Signaling and Prosocial Behavior: A Cause Marketing Mobile Field Experiment
Jean-Pierre Dubé, Xueming Luo & Zheng Fang
NBER Working Paper, August 2015
Abstract:
We empirically test an information economics based theory of social preferences in which ego utility and self-signaling can potentially crowd out the effect of consumption utility on choices. Two large-scale, randomized controlled field experiments involving a consumer good and charitable donations are conducted using a subject pool of actual consumers. We find that bundling relatively large charitable donations with a consumer good can generate non-monotonic regions of demand. Consumers also self-report significantly lower ratings of “feeling good about themselves” when a large donation is bundled with a large price discount for the good. The combined evidence supports the self-signaling theory whereby price discounts crowd out a consumer’s self-inference of altruism from buying a good bundled with a charitable donation. Alternative theories of motivation crowding are unable to fit the non-monotonic moments in the data. A structural model of self-signaling is fit to the data to quantify the economic magnitude of ego utility and its role in driving consumer decisions.
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How Construals of Money Versus Time Impact Consumer Charitable Giving
Rhiannon Macdonnell & Katherine White
Journal of Consumer Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
While past research has suggested that consumers have fundamentally different responses to thinking about money versus time, the current work clarifies an important nuance in terms of how consumers construe these two resources. The authors demonstrate that, in the domain of charitable giving, money is construed relatively more concretely, whereas time is construed relatively more abstractly. This difference in the construal of these two resources has implications for how appeals for charitable contributions or money versus time should be framed. When the construal level at which the consumer considers the cause is aligned (misaligned) with the construal level of the resource being requested, contribution intentions and behaviors increase (decrease). In addition, the moderating role of resource abundance is examined. In particular, when money is considered as being abundant (vs. non-abundant), consumers no longer exhibit more concrete thoughts in response to money compared to time. Finally, when the donation request makes consumers think of money in a more abundant manner, monetary donations can be successfully motivated with a more abstract call for charitable support. The theoretical and practical implications for marketers and charitable organizations are discussed.
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Conveniently Upset: Avoiding Altruism by Distorting Beliefs About Others' Altruism
Rafael Di Tella et al.
American Economic Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
We present results from a "corruption game" (a dictator game modified so that recipients can take a side payment in exchange for accepting a reduction in the overall size of the pie). Dictators (silently) treated to be able to take more of the recipient's tokens, took more of them. They were also more likely to believe that recipients had accepted side payments, even if there was a prize for accuracy. The results favor the hypothesis that people avoid altruistic actions by distorting beliefs about others' altruism.