Investigating (sequential) unit asking: An unsuccessful quest for scope sensitivity in willingness to donate judgments

Abstract

People exhibit scope insensitivity: Their expressed valuation of a problem is not proportionate with its scope or size. To address scope insensitivity in charitable giving, Hsee et al. (2013) developed the (Classical) Unit Asking technique, where people are first asked how much they are willing to donate to support a single individual, followed by how much they are willing to donate to support a group of individuals. In this paper, we explored the mechanisms, extensions, and limitations of the technique. In particular, we investigated an extension of the technique, which we call Sequential Unit Asking (SUA). SUA asks people a series of willingness‐to‐donate questions, in which the number of individuals to be helped increases in a stepwise manner until it reaches the total group size. Across four studies investigating donation judgments (total ), we did not find evidence that willingness to donate (WTD) judgments to the total group increased with larger groups. Instead, our results suggest that Unit Asking (sequential or classical) increases donation amounts only through a single one‐off boost. Further, we find evidence in three out of four studies that the SUA extension increases WTD judgments over Classical Unit Asking. In a fifth study () using a contingent valuation design (instead of donation judgments), we find scope sensitivity using all asking techniques. We conclude that, while it is difficult to create scope sensitivity in WTD judgments, SUA should be considered a promising approach to increase charitable donations.

The potential and pitfalls of unit asking in reducing scope insensitivity

“…In addition to varying whether the 2 assessments were within 1 or 2 projects, we investigated the size of the unit (Study 1), if the group was homogeneous or heterogeneous (i.e., children or/and adults; Study 2), the age of the unit victim (Studies 1-2), and how many were in the larger group (Studies 1-3). These manipulations had no substantial effect on scope insensitivity (see Maier et al, 2023 for some similar results). For example, having a homogeneous group (only children/adults) resulted in a reversed UA effect (in contrast to Hsee et al, 2013;Karlsson et al, 2020), whereas a heterogeneous group did not.…”

“…A third way is to not focus on a specific WTP but ask participants to indicate a perceived value (e.g., from 0 to 10) of the help project (similar to Kemp & Willetts, 1995), or better off, to let participants allocate funds across different expenditure categories rather than one specific project (similar to Kemp, 1991). Last, one could also do as Maier et al (2023), who approached the WTP with Bayesian models with lognormal likelihood and non-parametric frequentist solutions to accommodate the skew in observed responses. Note, however, that their setting was interpersonal giving, not policymaking.…”

“…This intervention has previously been shown to boost donations and increase sensitivity to scope (Hsee et al, 2013;Karlsson et al, 2020). However, a recent paper failed to find consistent support for increased scope insensitivity using this method (Maier et al, 2023). Thus, research has so far not succeeded in identifying when the intervention is successful in decreasing scope insensitivity and when it fails to do so (or possibly, even make it worse).…”

Beliefs about the end of humanity: How bad, likely, and important is human extinction?

“…In our pre-registered experiment (Study 4), all participants were asked how likely extinction would have to be this century for it to be the very highest priority. Our intervention was a modified version of the unit-asking technique, usually used to address scope insensitivity in the charitable giving domain (Hsee et al, 2013;Karlsson et al, 2020;Maier et al, 2023). In the experimental condition, participants were first asked how likely a risk that could kill everyone in a city with one million people would have to be for reducing the risk to be the very highest priority.…”