It’s me again… Ask avoidance and the dynamics of charitable giving

Abstract

Charities typically ask potential donors repeatedly for a donation. These repeated requests might trigger avoidance behaviour. Considering that, this article analyses the impact of offering the option to opt-out of receiving future fundraising asks on charitable giving. In a proposed utility framework, any opt-out option decreases the social pressure to donate. At the same time, an unconditional opt-out option induces feelings of gratitude toward the fundraiser, which may lead to a reciprocal increase in donations. The results of a lab experiment designed to disentangle the two channels show no negative impact of the option to avoid repeated asking for donations. Instead, the full model indicates a positive impact of the reciprocity channel. This finding suggests that it might be beneficial for charities to introduce an unconditional opt-out option during high-frequency fundraising campaigns.