Altruism Meets Participatory Video: A Correlational

Study of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

jodml.org /2015/06/01/altruism-meets-participatory-video-a-correlational-study-of-the-als-ice-bucket-
challenge/

John McArthur

Abstract

Digital literacy and social benefits met in the form of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge in August 2014. This
study assessed the experience of participants in the challenge to understand the relationships between
altruism, motivation to participate, and digital literacy. Results indicate relationships between altruism and
the motivators of product involvement and social benefits. In addition, results offer the perception of
contribution to a cause as a predictor of development of digital literacy.

Introduction

In August 2014, more than $100 million was donated to the ALS Association (ALSA) as a result of the Ice
Bucket Challenge. 1 The Ice Bucket Challenge was a video campaign in which participants took the
challenge by dumping ice water over their heads, posting a video of the challenge, and challenging their
friends to do the same. Ideally, each video was also accompanied by a donation to ALSA. The typical
challenge read something like this:

I was nominated for ALS Ice Bucket Challenge by Alexis Carreiro. I challenge Paul Mihailidis, Vanessa
Domine, and Esther Wojcicki to donate one hundred dollars to ALSA.org or post your Ice Bucket
Challenge video and donate ten dollars in the next twenty-four hours.

This digital chain letter approach to fundraising had been operating on Facebook for a while to raise money
for various charities. After ALS sufferer Peter Frates popularized the challenge in relation to ALS, ALSA
began to support the challenge.2

ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease), is a neurodegenerative
disease that attacks nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. For ALS sufferers, the result of progressive
nerve deterioration through this disease is a gradual but substantial loss of muscle control resulting in
paralysis and death. No cure currently exists. ALSA provides funding for research, patient support,
advocacy, and education surrounding ALS.3

Individuals, corporations, and families took part in the challenge and shared their videos. These videos
generated buzz, ALS awareness, and millions of dollars of donations. Videos of the Ice Bucket Challenge
surfaced on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Celebrities joined in the fun by challenging each other in
the spirit of one-upmanship. For example, Bill Gates drew an engineering schematic for an ice water
bucket and welded it together before dousing himself. His video 4 remains one of the most watched of all
the challenges:
Bill Gates participation in the 2014 ALS ice bucket challenge, on YouTube

The humor and creativity associated with participants in the challenge led to a variety of videos from
politicians, media magnates, and athletes. In one of the challenge’s funniest and most-viewed moments,
country singer Dolly Parton exclaims after taking the challenge, “And yes I have on a bra. Kenny [Rogers],
you gotta pay extra for the wet t-shirt contest.”5 Her humorous ad-lib seemed unrehearsed and real and
connected her video to the millions of other unscripted and personal messages developed through the
challenge.

Even though some of the videos referenced above went viral in their own right—Gates’s and Parton’s
videos each have millions of views on YouTube—the more interesting story is the sweeping spreadability6
of the challenge from person to person. This study seeks to understand the motivating factors that led
people to participate in the challenge and share it with their friends. In addition, the study also investigates
the subtexts of digital literacies in the challenge as social media users around the globe were creating and
sharing content online.

Virality, Spreadability, and Motivation to Share

Virality might best be defined in its association with its origin in medicine. A virus is a disease that spreads
from person to person through various forms of contact. In the online world, a message’s ability to spread
rampantly from person to person is known as virality. Often, virality can be measured by impressions (the
number of views a message receives) or shares (the number of times the message is circulated from
person to person).
The making of a viral phenomenon has been the subject of debate among marketing researchers, social
media gurus, and media personalities. In their article in the Journal of Marketing Research, researchers
Jonah Berger and Katherine Milkman note, “Although it is clear that social transmission is both frequent
and important, less is known about why certain pieces of online content are more viral than others.” 7
Berger, an associate professor of marketing in the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, has
established a career on the question of the virality of online content. His book Contagious: Why Things
Catch On8 was published in 2013. He lists six concepts that drive people to share information: social
currency, triggers, ease for emotion, public, practical value, and stories. The quest to discover these
causes of online virality continues to spur conversation among marketers for corporations and non-profit
organizations alike.

In Time magazine, writer Bill Saporito identified five learning lessons from the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.
He suggests that marketers might leverage an existing phenomenon, set fun rules, emphasize visuals,
simplify donations, and make the message stick.9 These lessons and others like them are developed to
help marketers determine how to make a viral campaign. But, as Berger and Milkman point out, some
influencers in the digital world have asserted that viral content sharing is more random than not.10

Unlike some of the topics previously researched, the virality of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge did not hinge
on one video (like Gates’s or Parton’s) but rather on the virality of an idea which spawned a meme: a
behavior or concept that spreads among members of a culture. Millions of people around the globe
produced individual Ice Bucket Challenge videos and shared them publicly. Rather than continual sharing
of an artifact, these actions represent the continual remixing of an idea—a virality of concept. Some
researchers have labeled this spreadability:

“Spreadability” refers to the technical resources that make it easier to circulate some kinds of content than
others, the economic structures that support or restrict circulation, the attributes of a media text that might
appeal to a community’s motivation for sharing material, and the social networks that link people through
the exchange of meaningful bytes.11

Indeed, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge of August 2014 was spread and circulated through the remixing of a
viral idea. Yet, participants involved in circulating the idea did so for a variety of reasons.

Historical research on word-of-mouth communication is closely related to current studies of virality and
spreadability.12 In 1966, Ernest Dichter’s article in the Harvard Business Review 13 described four
antecedents of word-of-mouth communication: product involvement, self involvement, other involvement,
and message involvement. Other researchers have recently used these categories to develop concepts
about word-of-mouth communication and online commenting.14 This research has led to additional
categories,15 such as social benefits and economic incentives. 16 For the purposes of this study, five
motivators of online participation emerge from the research mentioned above:

1. Product involvement, which can be defined as an individual’s connection to message content

2. Self involvement, which can be defined as an individual’s desire for personal gain
3. Other involvement, which can be defined as an individual’s concern for the welfare of others
4. Message intrigue, which can be defined as an individual’s interest resulting from well-devised
marketing and messaging strategies
5. Social benefit, which can be defined as an individual’s enjoyment derived from social connection.

Again, each of these factors represents a genre of reasons that might lead a person to participate in online
information sharing. This concept presumes that the motivations for content sharing on social networking
sites might replicate the motivations present in word-of-mouth communication. Whereas this assertion is
present in the literature mentioned above, we still have much to learn about similarities and differences
between digital and face-to-face communication. In either setting, these five motivators do not necessarily
occur independently from one another, and often multiple motivators contribute to an individual’s choice to
communicate. This study enters into the conversation on spreadability by examining the ALS Ice Bucket
Challenge of August 2014 through the lens of altruism as it relates to the motivation to create a video,
share it, and donate.

Online Sharing and Altruism

Online sharing and its relationship to altruism has been studied in a variety of contexts including online
status seeking,17 knowledge sharing, 18 and sharing within online communities.19 These studies and
others like them have investigated altruistic tendencies as motivation for sharing or desire to benefit
others.

Researcher J.P. Rushton has defined altruism as “social behavior carried out to achieve positive outcomes
for another rather than for self.”20 Rushton’s research over the course of his career, and in collaboration
with various other scholars, has advanced the understanding of altruism and the way it operates in
cultures around the world. To read about Rushton’s contribution to the study of altruism, see a detailed
essay by Yoon Mi-Hur chronicling his decade-spanning work in the journal Personality and Individual
Differences.21 One of his most widely-used contributions to the study of altruism is the assessment of the
altruistic personality on a self-reported behavioral scale.

The self-report altruism scale was developed by researchers Rushton, Chrisjohn, and Fekken in 1981 to
quantify an individual’s tendency toward altruistic behaviors. The scale asks respondents to indicate how
often they have engaged in behaviors that benefit another person. These include behaviors generally
considered helpful, like holding open an elevator door, offering to let someone jump ahead in line, and
donating blood. The twenty questions in the survey create an altruism score for each individual. This scale
has been used in hundreds of studies over the last three decades to gather data about altruism, and is
used in the present study, leading to research question one:

RQ 1: What are the relationships, if any, between altruism, donation, and motivations to participate in the
ALS Ice Bucket Challenge?

The Role of Contribution in Digital Literacies

In her white paper Digital and Media Literacy: A Plan of Action , Renee Hobbs describes five components
of digital and media literacy: the abilities to access information, analyze messages, create content, reflect
on conduct, and take social action. 22 These five competencies lay a foundation of practice for people
acting in a world of digital information. In the introduction to the Journal of Digital and Media Literacy, the
journal calls for an examination of the connection between digital media and civic engagement,23 noting
that civic engagement can be found in many forms in many definitions of community.

The civic engagement aspect of digital information sharing is becoming a widely discussed topic. In 2011,
Ethan Zuckerman discussed the need for productive participation in civic media sharing.24 Paul Mihailidis
furthers this idea, suggesting that society is currently on an inflection point for understanding the nature of
social action and civic engagement.25 These scholars often describe civic engagement through digital
media in terms of political action and even uprising, and rightly so. But, as Mihailidis suggests, social
action can be constituted in many different terms, including those of geography, political affiliation,
connection to a cause, or support for a community cause.
Therefore, in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, digital and media literacy can be examined in the choice to
take a social action. This claim hinges on two important assumptions. First, it hinges on the assumption
that participants understood and were willing to share their motivations for taking such an action. And
second, it suggests that they believed that their action made some sort of contribution to the cause of ALS
awareness. As a result, both of these assumptions are measured and incorporated into the findings.

In the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, viewers see people making a choice to take an action in the digital
environment. What onlookers cannot see are the motivations that inspired these actions. This study
focuses on the motivations present in the Ice Bucket Challenge to ascertain how perceptions of digital and
media literacy as social action are reflected in a person’s feelings about contribution and likelihood of
future action. Thus, the present research is interested in digital engagement leading to the following
research question:

RQ 2: What are the relationships, if any, between feelings of “contribution” to the cause and previous
participation in video consumption and sharing, perceived ease of production, and perceived level of
confidence about sharing videos online?

Method

To answer the research questions, the researcher employed a quantitative survey design featuring the
altruism scale 26 and questions surrounding the antecedents to word-of-mouth participation as described
below:

1. Product involvement—a connection to the message content—will be represented in this study by a

personal connection to ALS, broadly defined.
2. Self involvement—a motivation for personal gain—will be represented in this study by a desire for
personal benefits or pleasure.
3. Other involvement—a concern for others—will be represented in this study by a desire to be part of
a movement or make a difference in the world for the benefit of others.
4. Message intrigue—a result of marketing and messaging—will be represented in this study by an
interest in the messages shared by significant others, friends, and celebrities.
5. Social benefit—an enjoyment derived from social connection—will be represented in this study by
response to personal invitations and “challenges” to participate.

The survey asked about these antecedents to participation in two ways. First, the study asked participants
to rate the importance of measures of each of these on Likert scales. Then, the study asked each
participant to select the most important reason they participated from a list of options.27

In addition, the survey asked about participants’ perceived experience in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge,
the consumption and production of challenge videos, amount of donation, and demographic information.
Participants in the survey were also asked three simple questions about ALS. Whereas only 63% of
participants were able to answer all three questions correctly, 95% answered two of three correctly.

A total of 383 people participated in the survey ranging in age from eighteen to seventy-eight years, with an
average age of thirty-four. Of the participants, 78% were female and 22% were male.28 In terms of
ethnicity, participants self-identified as White or Caucasian (91%), Hispanic or Latino (3%), African-
American or Black (2%), Asian or Pacific Islander (2%), or American Indian or Alaskan Native (1%), or
declined to answer (1%). In the case of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, participation in the challenge
requires a moderate level of digital skill. A participant would need to be able to access information and
create content to participate. This fact precludes some populations from this study, including those without
Internet access or those without the skills or equipment necessary to create a video and share it online.

The survey was distributed electronically, and anonymous participants indicated their informed consent
before beginning the survey. Links to the survey were shared on social networking sites that included Ice
Bucket Challenge videos, like Facebook, through three methods: organic share, in groups that contained
the words Ice Bucket Challenge in the title, and using the #ALSIceBucketChallenge hashtag. Survey data
was collected online and later interpreted using SPSS.

Results and Discussion

To answer research question one, the researcher conducted a correlational study looking for significant
relationships between altruism, donation, and the antecedents of participation. Where significant
correlations were indicated, the researcher compared the means with further tests of statistical significance
to better understand the relationships present in the data.

As we might expect, altruism was positively and significantly correlated with amount of donation. 29 This
result indicates that a relationship exists between level of altruism and amount of donation. Participants
with higher altruism scores gave more money than participants with lower altruism scores. This correlation
is not surprising as one might assume that the more a person wants to help, the more money he might
contribute.

The results of the self-report altruism scale were positively and significantly correlated with two
antecedents of contribution: (1) product involvement30 and (2) social benefits. 31 Correlations with other
antecedents of contribution were not significant. This result suggests that the behaviors of altruism, like
participation in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, may hinge upon situational contexts. In the context of public
promotion online, the strength of these two antecedents demonstrates their power to compel public
participation in fundraising for a specific charity or cause. This may also suggest that the other antecedents
of participation are not related to altruism but do have other underlying factors that would inspire people to
participate. For example, those with high levels of message involvement may demonstrate high altruism or
low altruism but chose to participate because they enjoyed watching or creating Ice Bucket Challenge
videos.

As a result of this relationship, the researchers tested the means of the various antecedents of
participation to see if significant differences existed between the average scores for each group. The
results of an analysis of variance (ANOVA) of the relationship between altruism and the antecedents of
participation demonstrated a statistically significant relationship.32 Post-hoc tests revealed that a
significant difference in altruism existed between the people who reported product involvement (e.g., “I
have a passion for finding a cure for ALS”) as their primary reason for participating and those who reported
high social benefit (e.g., “A friend challenged me to participate”) as their primary reason. The product
involvement group perceived themselves as more altruistic than did those in the social benefit group.33

This relationship held true in the amount of donation as well. Significant differences existed between the
average donation amounts between the various groups.34 The average donation among the product
involvement group was $87.53. This number was higher than all other groups and significantly higher than
both the other involvement group (average donation of $40.15)35 and the social benefit group (average
donation of $35.66).36 The message involvement group had an average donation of $30.73, while the self-
involvement group donated an average of $24.69.37

A correlational study of the amount of donation and the importance of the factors had interesting results.
The amount of donation was positively and significantly correlated with the importance of product
involvement (e.g., passion for finding a cure or family member with ALS).38 This indicates that the more a
person reports a connection to ALS, the more money she might choose to give. The importance of
celebrity videos in the decision to participate (one measure of message-involvement in this study) was
negatively and significantly correlated with the amount of donation.39 This result indicates that the more
important a person rated celebrity videos in their decision to participate, the less money they donated.
Simply stated, as the importance of celebrity videos increased, the amount of donation decreased.

This last result raises a crucial question for fundraisers. Celebrity videos inspire people to participate in
fundraising. However, the people who are inspired by celebrity videos may give less than people who are
inspired by other motivations. For fundraisers, this finding is particularly compelling. For short-term
fundraising goals, celebrity videos can inspire people to participate who might not otherwise. However,
their contribution will be less than those who give from other motivations. For long-term fundraising,
product involvement might outpace other motivations in terms of donation and likelihood of future
participation. In the context of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, this is particularly important as the campaign
may have also raised awareness about the disease, thus increasing the likelihood of product involvement.
While awareness about the disease was not measured in this study, its impact on product involvement is
an important area for further research in fundraising.

Research question two inquired about the relationships between a variety of perceptions surrounding the
video production process. Not surprisingly, the number of videos a person previously published was
significantly correlated with the perceived ease of production of the video.40 This indicates that the more
videos a person had published on Facebook, the easier she found the video production process to be for
her Ice Bucket Challenge video. Perceived ease of production was also correlated with the perception that
making the video increased confidence in video sharing41 and the perception that the video made a
contribution to the cause.42

Interestingly, a participant’s perceived ease of production of the Ice Bucket Challenge video was also
significantly correlated with the likelihood that the participant would donate again to ALS 43 and the
likelihood that the participant would participate in another similar challenge online.44 This indicates that
those who found video production to be more difficult are less likely to repeat participation in similar events,
either for ALS or for another cause.

Evaluating this finding more thoroughly, the researcher compared the means of those who had previously
published five or more videos on Facebook and those who had previously published less than five.
Perception of increase in confidence in the group that published fewer videos was higher than in the group
that had published many videos. The difference was not significant.45 This result indicates that confidence
in online video sharing may not come from the simple act of sharing videos, but from another source.
Everyone who took this survey shared a video, but their collective confidence in sharing videos was not
moved. This finding raises some concern for efforts that seek to increase digital and media literacy in
communities.

However, a strong, significant correlation existed between the perception that “my video made a
contribution to the cause” and the perception that “making this video increased my confidence in making
and sharing videos online.”46 Moreover, the perception of contribution was also significantly correlated with
measures of affective learning (e.g., “I am glad I participated”) 47 and likelihood of repeated video
production behaviors for other causes.48

Whereas previous behaviors in video publishing did not correlate significantly with constructs surrounding
digital literacy, perceptions of contribution to a cause did. From a digital and media literacy perspective, this
finding is fascinating. When people perceive that their online video makes a contribution, their confidence
surrounding online video production increases. In addition, when people perceive that their video makes a
contribution, their likelihood of repeat contribution increases. This intersection of contribution-making and
digital literacy is ready for study in the context of online sharing.

No relationship existed between the number of Ice Bucket Challenge videos consumed and any of the
aforementioned measures of digital engagement. This finding indicates that watching videos about this
fundraising challenge did not impact a person’s perceptions of his or her own confidence, contribution, or
likelihood of future participation. This may be simply because each participant in this survey had published
a video and the benefits of viewing were outweighed by the benefits of participation. Or, it may indicate a
much more nuanced difference between the work of consumption and the work of production in the
development of feelings and behaviors surrounding digital and media literacy. This area is primed for
future research.

The limitations of this study are based in the sample. This research was conducted quickly while the Ice
Bucket Challenge was at the height of its popularity. This window of data collection added value in that it
was able to capture the insights of participants at the moment of their participation. However, the
demographics and sample size do not allow these findings to be highly generalizable to the total
population. Despite this fact, the exploratory nature of the study reveals a number of concepts previously
discussed with high heuristic value in the study of information spread online.

Using the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge as a case study adds to the conversations about online
communication and its relationships with altruism and fundraising. Kathy Giusti, the founder and chairman
of the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation, wrote an article for Time magazine about the Ice Bucket
Challenge. In it she wrote, “As brilliantly simple as the Ice Bucket Challenge is, its phenomenal success is
making many of us think hard about new ways to raise awareness and dollars.”49 Repeating the success
of the Ice Bucket Challenge will be an industry goal for foundations like hers. The present study contributes
to this aim and furthers the conversation surrounding online communication and altruism. In addition, the
rampant success of the Ice Bucket Challenge is one example of the expanding role of digital media in the
communication practices of our world. The skills of digital literacy continue to emerge as crucial tools for
the future, as digital media continue to alter the ways we connect and contribute.

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Notes (↵ returns to text)

1. ALS Association, “Individuals, Organizations, and Corporations Respond with Immense Generosity
 to the Ice Bucket Challenge” (press release), ALSA.org, August 29, 2014,
http://www.alsa.org/news/media/press-releases/ice-bucket-challenge-generosity.html.↵
2. See Bill Saporito, “Making a Splash: How the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge Could Change Fundraising
Forever,” Time, September 1, 2014, 16.↵
3. ALS Association, “Quick Facts about ALS & the ALS Association,” ALSA.org, accessed September
3, 2014, http://www.alsa.org/news/media/quick-facts.html.↵
4. Bill Gates, “Bill Gates ALS Ice Bucket Challenge,” August 15, 2014, YouTube video, 1:29,
http://youtu.be/XS6ysDFTbLU.↵
5. Dolly Parton, “Dolly Parton – ALS Ice Bucket Challenge,” August 28, 2014, YouTube video, 2:11,
http://youtu.be/AhorHC-tOwQ.↵
6. See Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green, Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning
in a Networked Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2013). ↵
7. Jonah Berger and Katherine L. Milkman, “What Makes Online Content Viral?” Journal of Marketing
Research 49, no. 2 (2012): 192.↵
8. Jonah Berger. Contagious: Why Things Catch On (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013). ↵
9. See Saporito, 16.↵
10. See Pete Cashmore, “YouTube: Why Do We Watch?” Time, December 17, 2009, accessed
September 3, 2014, http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/12/17/cashmore.youtube/index.html.↵
11. Jenkins, Ford, and Green, 4.↵
12. See Jo Brown, Amanda J. Broderick, and Nick Lee, “Word of Mouth Communication within Online
Communities: Conceptualizing the Online Social Network,” Journal of Interactive Marketing 21, no.
3 (2007): 2-20.↵
13. Dichter, Ernest, “How Word-of-Mouth Advertising Works,” Harvard Business Review 44, no. 6
(1966): 147-166.↵
14. See D.S. Sundaram, K. Mitra, and C. Webster, “Word-of-Mouth Communications: A Motivational
Analysis,” Advances in Consumer Research 25, no. 1 (1998): 527-531; Chrysanthos Dellarocas
and Ritu Narayan, “What Motivates Consumers to Review a Product Online? A Study of the
Product-Specific Antecedents of Online Movie Reviews” (paper presented at Workshop on
Information Systems and Economics (WISE), Evanston, IL, December 2006),
http://digital.mit.edu/wise2006/papers/2b-3_finalwise2006abstract-dell-narayan.pdf.↵
15. Chrysanthos Dellarocas and Ritu Narayan provide an excellent comparative explanation of these
categories on page 2 of their WISE paper available here: http://digital.mit.edu/wise2006/papers/2b-
3_finalwise2006abstract-dell-narayan.pdf.↵
16. See T. Hennig-Thurau et al., “Electronic Word-of-Mouth Via Consumer-Opinion Platforms: What
Motivates Consumers to Articulate Themselves on the Internet?” Journal of Interactive Marketing
18, no. 1 (2004): 38-52.↵
17. Joseph Lampel and Ajay Bhalla, “The Role of Status Seeking in Online Communities: Giving the Gift
of Experience,” Journal of Computer Mediated Communication 12, no. 2 (2007): 434-455.↵
18. Khe Foon Hew and Norika Hara, “Knowledge Sharing in Online Environments: A Qualitative Case
Study,” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology , 58 (no. 14): 2310-
2324.↵
19. Youncheng Wang and D.R. Fesenmaier, “Assessing Motivation of Contribution in Online
Communities: An Empirical Investigation of an Online Travel Community,” Electronic Markets 13, no.
 1 (2003): 33-45.↵
20. J. P. Rushton, Altruism, Socialization, and Society (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1980): 8. ↵
21. Yoon-Mi Hur, “J.P. Rushton’s Contributions to the Study of Altruism,” Personality and Individual
Differences 55, no. 3 (2012): 247-250.↵
22. Renee Hobbs, Digital and Media Literacy: A Plan of Action (Washington, DC: The Aspen Institute,
2010), vii-viii.↵
23. See Alexis Carreiro, “Introduction to the Journal of Digital and Media Literacy” Journal of Digital and
Media Literacy 1 (2013), http://www.jodml.org/2013/02/01/introduction-to-the-journal-of-digital-and-
media-literacy/.↵
24. See Ethan Zuckerman, “Four Questions about Civic Media,” DMLCentral (blog). June 27, 2011,
http://dmlcentral.net/blog/ethan-zuckerman/four-questions-about-civic-media.↵
25. See Paul Mihailidis, Media Literacy and the Emerging Citizen: Youth, Engagement and Participation
in Digital Culture (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2014).↵
26. Rushton,, Chrisjohn, and Fekken.↵
27. he list of options and list of measures were identical and included statements such as “I have a
passion for finding a cure for ALS,” “A friend challenged me to participate,” and “I wanted to see how
many likes my video would get.”↵
28. The participants in this survey and the sample size make it best classified as an exploratory study,
as the participants skewed heavily toward a particular age group and gender.↵

29. Correlation between altruism and amount of donation: R 2 = .169 , p <.001.↵

30. Correlation between altruism and product involvement: R 2 = .221 , p <.001.↵

31. Correlation between altruism and social benefit: R 2 = .149 , p <.001.↵

32. ANOVA results comparing means for altruism by antecedent group: F = 3.125, p = .015. ↵
33. p = .029.↵
34. ANOVA results comparing means for donation by antecedent group: F = 3.606, p = .007. ↵
35. p = .043.↵
36. P = .007.↵
37. These differences are not statistically significant but provide context for the donation patterns
among those choosing to participate in the challenge.↵

38. Correlation between amount of donation and product involvement: R 2 = .167 , p <.005.↵

39. Correlation between amount of donation and importance of celebrity videos: R 2 = -.100 . , p <.05.↵

40. Correlation between number of videos previously published and ease of production: R2 = .120 , p
<.05.↵

41. Correlation between ease of production and increase in confidence: R 2 = .152 , p <.005.↵

42. Correlation between ease of production and perceptions of contribution: R2 = .272 , p <.001.↵

43. Correlation between ease of production and likelihood of future donations to ALS causes: R 2 = .252
, p <.001.↵

44. Correlation between ease of production and likelihood of participation in similar challenges: R2 =
.355 , p <.001.↵
45. t-test comparing confidence means of low publishing and high publishing groups: t=1.802, p=.073. ↵

46. Correlation between perceptions of increased confidence and perceptions of contribution: R 2 = .263
, p <.001.↵

47. Correlation between perceptions of contribution and “glad I participated”: R2 = .503, p <.001.↵
48. Correlation between perceptions of contribution and likelihood of future participation in similar
challenges: R2 = .351, p <.001.↵
49. See Kathy Giusti, “The Real Ice Bucket Challenge: What’s Harder than Dumping Freezing Water on
Your Head? Repeating This Kind of Success,” Time, September 8-15, 2014, 29.↵