Morality – Center for Advanced Hindsight

A Behavioral Scientist’s Guide to Increasing Charitable Donations

admin — Mon, 29 Jan 2018 19:58:51 +0000

This guide is a multi-part series exploring how we can use behavioral economics to maximize charitable contributions. Check out part two of the series in March!

This series is created by Ciara Lutz and Ting Jiang

If you work for a non-profit, it is probably true that your organization cannot exist without charitable contributions. Donations allow you to continue the important work you do, whether that work sustains artistic and educational institutions or funds the reduction of poverty or disease.

Although charitable giving seems to be on the rise, getting people to donate to your non-profit organization can be a daunting task. Sometimes it seems that no matter what you do, people just do not want to contribute to your cause. If you ask for too much, people might ignore your request outright. But if you ask for too little, you may have difficulty getting the funds you need. So, the question is: how much should you ask for in order to make donors less likely to turn down your request?

It is likely that a good portion of the donations your organization receives come from online donors. Recent trends show that online giving is on the rise – in 2016, online donations increased by almost 8%. This suggests that non-profits should focus much (though not all) of their efforts on online giving.

Defaults and Charitable Giving

Our global health and development team, with support from the Joep Lange Institute, is currently developing a peer-to-peer charitable giving platform called Mbrella on which donors from the United States and Europe can contribute to the healthcare costs of low-income African families.

As part of the design process, the team is conducting a series of online studies with an Mbrella prototype. Participants were told that they had a 1 in 50 chance to win $55. They could choose to donate some or all of this amount, but their decision would only be enacted if they won the lottery.

In this particular study, participants were presented a default amount of $5, $30, or $55, but were free to adjust their final donation amount by clicking on the + and – buttons. We hypothesized that the $55 default would lead to the highest donation amounts but the lowest number of donations.

Our hypothesis was partially confirmed, as the default amounts of $30 and $55 led to significantly higher donation amounts compared to a default amount of $5. However, donors gave about the same amount whether they received a default of $30 or $55. Additionally, the $55 default seemed to lead a substantial number of donors to not give at all.

Interestingly, it was not the lowest anchor amount ($5) that led to most people giving, but the $30 default, which led more people to give compared to both the $5 and $55 defaults.

In the study, we also asked participants to complete several personality scales, such as the cognitive reflection test and the big five scale (measuring openness, conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, and extraversion). We found that participants high in cognitive reflection (a tendency to carefully think things through rather than act solely based on instinct) were less likely to donate the default amount overall.

Defaults work

Pre-selecting an amount reduces the number of steps it takes to donate and encourages people to donate at that level. Besides making the act of donation slightly easier, the default amount itself sends an implicit message about what others are likely donating. When the default is set at a certain amount, it is easy to imagine that others are also giving at that level.

Preselect a moderate amount

Providing people with a small default amount may not increase donations. One potential explanation is that the $5 amount is so close to zero that people may not see anything wrong with donating nothing at all. A default that is too large, on the other hand, may scare potential donors away.

On the whole, our results suggest that slightly modifying the experience of giving by providing donors with moderately high default amounts can increase average Mbrella donations. It is worth finding out the exact default amounts that would maximize donation by running pre-tests before you settle on your user journey design. This will enable your organization to continue its valuable work.

Ciara Lutz is a researcher at the Center for Advanced Hindsight at Duke University, an applied behavioral science research lab that helps people be happier, healthier, and wealthier. You can reach her at ciara.lutz@duke.edu

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How to Increase the Joy of Giving

admin — Wed, 20 Dec 2017 21:10:44 +0000

Are you considering giving to a charity this holiday season? Before answering yes and getting your checkbook out, there is some research you should be aware of and tactics to consider!

Charitable giving is indeed a substantial industry in the United States. According to Giving USA, Americans contributed $390.05 billion to US-based charities in 2016. Giving is especially relevant at this time of year. For instance, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation partnered with Facebook to match $2 million in Facebook users’ donations on Giving Tuesday (November 28, 2017).

Photo Credit (Milada Vigerova / @mili_vigerova)

Your family members, friends, coworkers, and crimson-clad bell-ringers at your local grocery store might also be asking you to make a donation. It seems that people are especially happy and generous at the end of the year. What if you could experience this holiday cheer more frequently throughout the year?

Research overview

The popular saying that it’s “better to give than to receive” is scientifically supported. Researchers from the University of British Columbia and Harvard Business Schools conducted a series of experiments in which participants were tasked with either spending some amount of money on themselves, or on someone else. On average, participants reported feeling happier after spending money on others, regardless of the amount.

Professor Netta Weinstein led a research study that found giving leads to happiness, but only if we make the choice to give on our own. They allowed one group of participants to choose whether they wanted to help someone, while the other group of participants were told that they had to help someone. Participants who helped because they were told to reported significantly lower levels of happiness compared to those who chose to help someone. This is why we may not feel very good after depositing a $5 bill into a Salvation Army bucket. Some may have felt that this decision to give was due more to external pressure than our own desire to give.

Research also shows that the happiness associated with giving is increased when one feels that they have made an impact.

If you read The Upside of Irrationality, you might recall that segmenting positive experiences makes them more enjoyable. Think of it this way: imagine you really enjoy chocolate cake, and you cut yourself a slice. That first bite is going to taste incredible and satisfying. Now imagine you immediately reach for another slice. How would it taste? Wouldn’t it taste much better if you waited a few days, weeks, or even months?

Alternative tactics to the one-off holiday donation

Given this research, here is some practical advice to consider.

Donate smaller amounts on a monthly basis. Giving to charity on a monthly basis enables you to feel the happiness of giving year-round as opposed to during the holiday season alone (similar to how eating the chocolate cake is more savory over the long-term rather than indulging it all in one setting). Donating monthly is easy to do; many organizations encourage this. Consider setting up a recurring reminder for yourself. This way, you are not forgetting about it, but rather are actively making the decision to donate and thus allowing yourself to feel the joy of giving.
Be deliberate in choosing your charity if you are prone to give at the end of the year only when others ask you to. This unlocks the emotional benefit of giving, as you are donating because you want to, and not due to external pressure to do so.
Track the impact of organizations you are considering donating to by leveraging websites like givewell.org or charitywatch.org. This enables you to further enjoy being part of a cause that is making a difference.

It is amazing what a few simple tweaks can do to improve the experience of giving. It will make you far happier than giving to causes on an ad hoc basis. In all likelihood, these minor adjustments will also make the individuals associated with the causes you donate to happier as well. It’s an all-around win-win!

Ciara Lutz is a research associate at Duke University’s Center for Advanced Hindsight, an applied behavioral science research lab that helps people be happier, healthier and wealthier. You can reach her at ciara.lutz@duke.edu.

References

Aknin, L. B., Dunn, E. W., Whillans, A. V., Grant, A. M., & Norton, M. I. (2013). Making a difference matters: Impact unlocks the emotional benefits of prosocial spending. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 88, 90-95.

Dunn, E. W., Aknin, L. B., & Norton, M. I. (2008). Spending money on others promotes happiness. Science, 319, 1687-1688.

Nelson, L. D., & Meyvis, T. (2008). Interrupted consumption: Disrupting adaptation to hedonic experiences, Journal of Marketing Research, 45, 654-664.

Weinstein, N., & Ryan, R. M. (2010). When helping helps: Autonomous motivation for prosocial behavior and its influence on well-being for the helper and recipient. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(2), 222-244.

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Please Don’t Steal the Charmin

admin — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 07:00:47 +0000

A Chinese tourist destination decided to experiment with offering free toilet paper, the Wall Street Journal reports. Rather than the usual procedure in China, where people bring their own toilet paper, in Qingdao they now encounter a toilet paper dispenser when they enter the public restroom (and, naturally, pass it again on the way out).

Now that the dispensers have been in the bathrooms for a month, it has become clear that visitors to Qingdao’s restrooms take an astonishing amount of care for their personal hygiene. Two kilometers (1.24 miles) of toilet paper disappear each day.

In this case, the excess T.P. use seems to reflect our findings with other forms of cheating and stealing: most people are cheating a little, rather than a few people cheating a lot. Of course, there are exceptions.

The toilet paper scenario meets the right conditions for people to cheat: they’ve got the opportunity and face no consequences for taking a bit extra, they can use the toilet paper later, and they can rationalize their behavior. They might tell themselves that the government is paying for their bathroom use in general, not only for that specific restroom; or that it’s expected that they’d take extra on the way out; or that they’ve already paid for it in the form of taxes; or that the government deserves what it gets. They’ve easily justified a way to walk out with wads of toilet paper and an untroubled conscience.

But why steal something like toilet paper?

One explanation probably has to do with the power of free. Maybe Qingdao’s bathroom users are so enchanted with the idea of FREE toilet paper that they would take it in any case, regardless of what they know about its value or usefulness.

Another explanation that pops up a lot with government-provided goods is the tragedy of the commons. The theory goes that individuals will use a limited resource (like commons for grazing animals) in an unsustainable way, so long as they get the full benefit and the harm is spread across the group. In the case of the toilet paper, the theory suggests that people use no more than they need when they have to pay for it individually. But when the cost is spread out across Qingdao, they are happy to overuse the resource. The usual prescription is to make individuals pay for the resource on their own—in other words, to go back to the days without free toilet paper.

But there might be a better solution. We can take research from behavioral economics to think of ideas that may be less strict than taking away the free toilet paper and, instead, simply push people toward lighter use of the product. How about replacing the landscape paintings above some dispensers with a picture of watching eyes—a tactic that has effectively encouraged people to clean up after themselves and pay on the honor system.

In Qingdao, restroom managers have attempted to confront their problem by posting a poetic reminder of social responsibility:

Convenience for you,
convenience for me,
civility is there for all to see.
My paper use, your paper use,
conservation is up to us.

The sign hasn’t had a noticable effect yet, but it may be on the right track. Reminders like the poem sometimes work (p.41, The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty) to keep people from stealing toilet paper. The Qingdao bathroom poets appeal to bathroom users’ social norms (“civility is there for all to see”) and allude to future benefits (convenience and conservation)—tactics that have been shown to work in getting people to wash their hands. But getting some sort of assent—like a signature—may be even more effective.

For example, bathroom visitors could sign in under a poem like this:

Future benefits and social obligations
Should outweigh your current temptations
You agree not to steal by signing below
You’ll take just what you need when you need to go

Sign here: _______________________

_______________________

_______________________

Of course, if the bathroom management is going to ask people to sign anywhere, they might also want to keep watch over the “free” pens.

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