IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/24327.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Intuitive Donating: Testing One-Line Solicitations for $1 Donations in a Large Online Experiment

Author

Listed:
  • Samantha Horn
  • Dean Karlan

Abstract

We partnered with a large online auction website to test differing messages’ effects on the decision to donate to charity at checkout. Our setting, where impulsive decisions are likely to be driving donations, allows us to evaluate intuitive responses to messages prompting a donation. We find that shorter messages, matching grants, and descriptions of a charity’s mission increase both the likelihood that a user donates, as well as the average amount donated. Conversely, displaying the impact of the donated amount, the popularity of the charity, and that a charity uses scientific evidence do not improve donation rates. These results contribute to our understanding of how framing requests drives the decision to donate and are practically relevant to the many retail sites which promote giving at point of sale.

Suggested Citation

  • Samantha Horn & Dean Karlan, 2018. "Intuitive Donating: Testing One-Line Solicitations for $1 Donations in a Large Online Experiment," NBER Working Papers 24327, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:24327
    Note: PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w24327.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Angus Deaton, 2009. "Instruments of development: Randomization in the tropics, and the search for the elusive keys to economic development," Working Papers 1128, Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Center for Health and Wellbeing..
    2. Dean Karlan & John A List, 2012. "How Can Bill and Melinda Gates Increase Other People’s Donations to Fund Public Goods?," Working Papers id:4880, eSocialSciences.
    3. Karlan, Dean & List, John A., 2020. "How can Bill and Melinda Gates increase other people's donations to fund public goods?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).
    4. repec:pri:cheawb:deaton%20instruments%20of%20development%20keynes%20lecture%202009.pdf is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Daniel Kahneman, 2003. "Maps of Bounded Rationality: Psychology for Behavioral Economics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(5), pages 1449-1475, December.
    6. Vesterlund, Lise, 2003. "The informational value of sequential fundraising," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(3-4), pages 627-657, March.
    7. repec:pri:rpdevs:instruments_of_development.pdf is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Dean Karlan and John A. List, 2012. "How Can Bill and Melinda Gates Increase Other People’s Donations to Fund Public Goods? - Working Paper 292," Working Papers 292, Center for Global Development.
    9. repec:pri:cheawb:deaton%20instruments%20of%20development%20keynes%20lecture%202009 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sudbury, Adrienne W. & Vossler, Christian A., 2022. "Checking out checkout charity: A study of point-of-sale donation campaigns," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 204(C), pages 252-270.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Drouvelis, Michalis & Marx, Benjamin M., 2022. "Can charitable appeals identify and exploit belief heterogeneity?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 198(C), pages 631-649.
    2. Michalis Drouvelis & Benjamin M. Marx, 2021. "Dimensions of donation preferences: the structure of peer and income effects," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 24(1), pages 274-302, March.
    3. Feine, Gregor & Groh, Elke D. & von Loessl, Victor & Wetzel, Heike, 2021. "The double dividend of social information in charitable giving: Evidence from a framed field experiment," VfS Annual Conference 2021 (Virtual Conference): Climate Economics 242437, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    4. Sadoff, Sally & Samek, Anya, 2019. "The effect of recipient contribution requirements on support for social programs," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 1-16.
    5. Jack, B. Kelsey & Recalde, María P., 2015. "Leadership and the voluntary provision of public goods: Field evidence from Bolivia," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 80-93.
    6. Ebeling, Felix & Feldhaus, Christoph & Fendrich, Johannes, 2017. "A field experiment on the impact of a prior donor’s social status on subsequent charitable giving," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 124-133.
    7. Feine, Gregor & Groh, Elke D. & von Loessl, Victor & Wetzel, Heike, 2023. "The double dividend of social information in charitable giving: Evidence from a framed field experiment," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    8. Bartels, Lara & Kesternich, Martin, 2022. "Motivate the crowd or crowd- them out? The impact of local government spending on the voluntary provision of a green public good," ZEW Discussion Papers 22-040, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    9. Levin, Tova & Levitt, Steven D. & List, John A., 2023. "A Glimpse into the world of high capacity givers: Experimental evidence from a university capital campaign," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 212(C), pages 644-658.
    10. Johanna Catherine Maclean & John Buckell & Joachim Marti, 2019. "Information Source and Cigarettes: Experimental Evidence on the Messenger Effect," NBER Working Papers 25632, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Lenka Fiala & Charles N. Noussair, 2017. "Charitable Giving, Emotions, And The Default Effect," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(4), pages 1792-1812, October.
    12. Cagala, Tobias & Glogowsky, Ulrich & Grimm, Veronika & Rincke, Johannes & Tuset-Cueva, Amanda, 2019. "Rent extraction and prosocial behavior," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 709-723.
    13. Luca Corazzini & Christopher Cotton & Enrico Longo & Tommaso Reggiani, 2021. "The Gates Effect in Public Goods Experiments: How Donations Flow to the Recipients Favored by the Wealthy," MUNI ECON Working Papers 2021-13, Masaryk University, revised Feb 2023.
    14. Steffen Huck & Imran Rasul & Andrew Shephard, 2015. "Comparing Charitable Fundraising Schemes: Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment and a Structural Model," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 7(2), pages 326-369, May.
    15. Indranil Goswami & Indranil Goswami, 2020. "No Substitute for the Real Thing: The Importance of In-Context Field Experiments in Fundraising," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 39(6), pages 1052-1070, November.
    16. Bastian Hartmann & Martin Werding, 2012. "Donating Time or Money: Are they Substitutes or Complements?," CESifo Working Paper Series 3835, CESifo.
    17. Ho, Thong Quoc & Nie, Zihan & Alpizar, Francisco & Carlsson, Fredrik & Nam, Pham Khanh, 2022. "Celebrity endorsement in promoting pro-environmental behavior," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 198(C), pages 68-86.
    18. Indranil Goswami & Oleg Urminsky, 2018. "No Substitute for the Real Thing: The Importance of In-Context Field Experiments In Fundraising," Natural Field Experiments 00660, The Field Experiments Website.
    19. O'Garra, Tanya & Sisco, Matthew R., 2018. "Redistribution and Social Information (ReSoc)," SocArXiv 28xwv, Center for Open Science.
    20. Catherine C. Eckel & Hanna G. Hoover & Erin L. Krupka & Nishita Sinha & Rick K. Wilson, 2023. "Using social norms to explain giving behavior," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 26(5), pages 1115-1141, November.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers
    • H4 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:24327. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.