Resources

Behavioral psychology and charitable donations: a literature review

I wanted a place to compile the resources I discovered, in the hope that they’d be of use to other charities. Here are some of the key papers I found…

What Works to Increase Charitable Donations? A Meta-Review

ABSTRACT Alexander K. Saeri et al.

Many charities rely on donations to support their work addressing some of the world’s most pressing problems. We conducted a meta-review to determine what interventions work to increase charitable donations. We found 21 systematic reviews incorporating 1339 primary studies and over 2,139,938 participants. Our meta-meta-analysis estimated the average effect of an intervention on charitable donation size and incidence: r = 0.08 (95% CI [0.03, 0.12]). Due to limitations in the included systematic reviews, we are not certain this estimate reflects the true overall effect size. The most robust evidence found suggests charities could increase donations by (1) emphasising individual beneficiaries, (2) increasing the visibility of donations, (3) describing the impact of the donation, and (4) enacting or promoting tax-deductibility of the charity. We make recommendations for improving primary research and reviews about charitable donations, and how to apply the meta-review findings to increase charitable donations.

When should the Ask be a Nudge? The Effect of Default Amounts on Charitable Donations

ABSTRACT Indranil Goswami & Oleg Urminsky

How does setting a donation option as the default in a charitable appeal affect people's decisions? In eight studies, comprising 11,508 participants making 2,423 donation decisions in both experimental settings and a large-scale natural field experiment, the authors investigate the effect of “choice-option” defaults on the donation rate, average donation amount, and the resulting revenue. They find (1) a “scale-back” effect, in which low defaults reduce average donation amounts; (2) a “lower-bar” effect, in which defaulting a low amount increases donation rate; and (3) a “default-distraction” effect, in which introducing any defaults reduces the effect of other cues, such as positive charity information. Contrary to the view that setting defaults will backfire, defaults increased revenue in the field study. However, the findings suggest that defaults can sometimes be a “self-canceling” intervention, with countervailing effects of default option magnitude on decisions and resulting in no net effect on revenue. The authors discuss the implications of the findings for research on fundraising specifically, for choice architecture and behavioral interventions more generally, and for the use of “nudges” in policy decisions.

The effectiveness of nudging: A meta-analysis of choice architecture interventions across behavioral domains

ABSTRACT Mertens et al.

Over the past decade, choice architecture interventions or so-called nudges have received widespread attention from both researchers and policy makers. Built on insights from the behavioral sciences, this class of behavioral interventions focuses on the design of choice environments that facilitate personally and socially desirable decisions without restricting people in their freedom of choice. Drawing on more than 200 studies reporting over 450 effect sizes (n = 2,149,683), we present a comprehensive analysis of the effectiveness of choice architecture interventions across techniques, behavioral domains, and contextual study characteristics. Our results show that choice architecture interventions overall promote behavior change with a small to medium effect size of Cohen's d = 0.45 (95% CI [0.39, 0.52]). In addition, we find that the effectiveness of choice architecture interventions varies significantly as a function of technique and domain. Across behavioral domains, interventions that target the organization and structure of choice alternatives (decision structure) consistently outperform interventions that focus on the description of alternatives (decision information) or the reinforcement of behavioral intentions (decision assistance). Food choices are particularly responsive to choice architecture interventions, with effect sizes up to 2.5 times larger than those in other behavioral domains. Overall, choice architecture interventions affect behavior relatively independently of contextual study characteristics such as the geographical location or the target population of the intervention. Our analysis further reveals a moderate publication bias toward positive results in the literature. We end with a discussion of the implications of our findings for theory and behaviorally informed policy making.

Opposites attract: Impact of background color on effectiveness of emotional charity appeals

ABSTRACT Choi et al.

The present work utilizes research on context effects and color psychology to investigate how background color can enhance the effectiveness of positive and negative charity appeals. Five experiments measuring both actual donations and donation intention examine the hypothesis that a negative charity appeal against an orange (vs. blue) background and a positive charity appeal against a blue (vs. orange) background will increase donations. We propose that this is because blue and orange colors are incongruous with positive and negative charity appeals, respectively, due to the affective valences of the appeals and the perceptions of warmth and coldness cued by the background colors. This incongruity enhances the attention people pay to the charity appeals, thereby strengthening their emotional response to the appeals, which increases charitable donations. When attention is manipulated, people who pay a high (vs. low) level of attention to the charity appeal are more likely to donate regardless of the color and valence of the appeal, suggesting attention is an important antecedent to the intensity of the emotional response and subsequent donation behavior. We also identify affect diagnosticity as a boundary condition for the effect – when people are informed that color affects their emotions, the contextual effect of color disappears.

Further reading.

  • A literature review of empirical studies of philanthropy: Eight mechanisms that drive charitable giving

    Bekkers, R., & Wiepking, P.

  • Enhancing helping behavior: An integrative framework for promotion planning

    Bendapudi, N., et al.

  • The interactive effects of image and message in increasing charitable behavior

    Pham, C., & Septianto, F.

  • How companies use typeface design to engage consumers in charitable activities

    Xing-Yu, M. et al.