Sympathy and callousness: The impact of deliberative thought on donations to identifiable and statistical victims

Small, Deborah A.; Loewenstein, George; Slovic, Paul

doi:10.1016/j.obhdp.2006.01.005

Cited by 772 publications

(699 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Perhaps asking people to consider volunteering time leads to greater imagination of the people in need (Batson 1987) and hence empathy toward those people (Small et al 2007). This stronger empathy may have led to higher motivation to help.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, as people age, they increasingly adopt a more emotional mind-set and are guided by socioemotional goals (e.g., positive social interactions), whereas younger adults tend to be guided by more cognitive-based goals (e.g., learning; Carstensen et al 1999). When people are given statistical information about victims, they tend to revert to the cold or rational mind-set, thereby reducing the amount of contribution to those victims (Small, Loewenstein, and Slovic 2007). In the current research, we argue that another way in which these distinct mind-sets can be induced is by asking people to consider their use of time versus money.…”

Section: Time and Money Activate Different Beliefs And Goalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Happiness of Giving: The Time-Ask Effect

Liu¹,

Aaker²

2008

J Consum Res

336

264

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This research examines how a focus on time versus money can lead to two distinct mind-sets that affect consumers' willingness to donate to charitable causes. The results of three experiments, conducted both in the lab and in the field, reveal that asking individuals to think about "how much time they would like to donate" (vs. "how much money they would like to donate") to a charity increases the amount that they ultimately donate to the charity. Fueling this effect are differential mind-sets activated by time versus money. Implications for the research on time, money, and emotional well-being are discussed. (c) 2008 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Time and Money Activate Different Beliefs And Goalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Happiness of Giving: The Time-Ask Effect

Liu¹,

Aaker²

2008

J Consum Res

336

264

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“…As before the donor receives utility from private consumption x i and public good production G, but he now also receives a warm-glow utility from the fraction of his donation that goes toward the public good, g i . 26 Conjecturing s and others' total contribution G i , donor i maximizes his utility in (7) subject to budget constraint: x i + g i = m. Denoting by p = 1 1 s the price of giving and 25 Small et al (2007) experimentally supports this fundraising strategy: people give more to the causes they identify with, than to the ones they reason about. 26 Hence, we implicitly assume that donors do not obtain warm-glow from simply paying for the fundraising cost.…”

Section: Aware Warm-glow Donorsmentioning

confidence: 97%

A theory of outsourced fundraising: Why dollars turn into “Pennies for Charity”

Paskalev

Yıldırım

2017

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

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Charities frequently rely on professional solicitors whose commissions exceed half of total donations. To understand this practice, we propose a principal-agent model in which the charity optimally offers a higher commission to a more "efficient" solicitor, raising the price of giving significantly. Outsourcing is, therefore, profitable for the charity only if giving is very price-inelastic. This, however, clashes with empirical evidence. We show that paid solicitations can benefit the charity if: (1) donors are unaware; (2) donors have intense "warm-glow" preferences; or (3) the charity worries mostly about watchdog ratings. We argue that informing the public of the mere existence of paid solicitations may be the most effective policy available.

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“…Where inertia, as we define it, differs to status quo bias is that with inertia a conscious decision has been made to do something, but the transaction cost of doing so delays implementing the decision. 2 Our interpretation of inertia also differs to procrastination and self-control problems due to inconsistent time preferences, where people find reasons to put off doing onerous tasks that generate immediate costs and future rewards and to willpower depletion (modelled by O'Donoghue and Rabin, 1999;Halevy, 2008;Harris and Laibson, 2013;Dekel and Lipman, 2011;Fudenberg and Levine, 2006;Ozdenoren, Salant, and Silverman, , 2012 (Small, Loewenstein, and Slovic, 2007). However, in all of these studies subjects decide while in the laboratory whether to donate and then make that payment immediately.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Questions explored include the effects of rebates versus dollar-for-dollar matching of donations (see, for example, Eckel and Grossman, 2003;Davis, 2006), public recognition of donations (Karlan and McConnell, 2012), telling participants the charity will spend the money in poor countries (Brañas-Garza, 2006), providing information on why the country in which recipients live is poor (Etang, Fielding and Knowles, 2012), manipulating the perceived worthiness of recipients (Fong and Luttmer, 2011) and directing donations to an identifiable victim (Small, Loewenstein, and Slovic, 2007). However, in all of these studies subjects decide while in the laboratory whether to donate and then make that payment immediately.…”

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confidence: 99%

Transaction Costs, the Opportunity Cost of Time and Inertia in Charitable Giving

Knowles

Servátka²

2013

SSRN Journal

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We conduct a laboratory experiment to analyze the effect transactions costs and inertia have on charitable giving. We conjecture that transaction costs will have a greater effect on donations if the solicitation is received when the opportunity cost of time is high. Inertia could become a factor if people intend to give, but postpone making the payment until they have more time, and having postponed making the donation once, keep doing so. We find evidence of a transaction cost effect, with the size of this effect depending on the opportunity cost of time, but no statistically significant inertia effect.Keywords: Charitable giving; dictator game; transaction costs; opportunity cost of time;inertia. JEL Classifications: C91; D64 Acknowledgements: Earlier versions of the paper were presented at the New Zealand Association of Economists Conference (Wellington, June 2013), the Australia New Zealand Experimental Economics Workshop (Brisbane, August 2013), the Science of Philanthropy Initiative Conference (Chicago, October 2013), the North American Experimental Economics Association Conference (Santa Cruz, October 2013) and in the University of Otago Seminar Programme (Dunedin, September 2013). We are grateful to participants for the many helpful comments received. Financial support was provided by the School of Business at the University of Otago and the College of Business and Economics at the University of Canterbury. (Orman, 2004: attributed to T. Trueblood) Introduction.This is not actually a paper about fishing, but about giving money to charity. The above quote, however, sums up what this paper is about if "go fishing" is replaced with "donate".Just as going fishing can be put off to another day, so can donating money to charity. This paper analyzes whether people are subject to such inertia with respect to charitable giving. In particular we ask whether some people intend to give money to charity, but simply never get around to doing so? For example, someone may read an email asking for a donation and is inclined to donate, but as she is busy preparing for a meeting decides to wait until after the meeting to click on the link to the charity's website and enter her credit card details. It is then possible, that having delayed making the donation once, she will do so again, until the opportunity to donate has passed.Why do people postpone making their donations? Does the presence of transaction costs combined with a high opportunity cost of time at the moment of solicitation reduce donations? 1 Both questions have important policy implications as finding ways to reduce transaction costs, and the potential for inertia, could increase donations to charity.The three issues mentioned in the title of the current paper go hand in hand. We conjecture that inertia is likely to exist in the presence of transaction costs when two other conditions are satisfied simultaneously: (1) making a donation does not have to be made on the spot but can be postponed until later (which is usually the case with requests sent ...

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Sympathy and callousness: The impact of deliberative thought on donations to identifiable and statistical victims

Cited by 772 publications

References 18 publications

The Happiness of Giving: The Time-Ask Effect

The Happiness of Giving: The Time-Ask Effect

A theory of outsourced fundraising: Why dollars turn into “Pennies for Charity”

Transaction Costs, the Opportunity Cost of Time and Inertia in Charitable Giving

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