Journal of Economic Psychology 90 (2022) 102518

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Journal of Economic Psychology

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/joep

Donation requests following a pay rise✩

Santiago I. Sautua
Universidad del Rosario, Department of Economics, Bogotá, Colombia

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

JEL classification: In this study, a field experiment was conducted to examine the effects of requesting a donation
Codes following a pay rise announcement. The experiment evaluated the effects of (1) unexpectedly
C93 requesting a donation either immediately after the pay rise announcement or a week after the
D64
announcement, and (2) informing the workers in advance about the forthcoming request for
D91
a donation. First, the likelihood of donation increased when the request was made soon after
Keywords: the pay rise announcement, compared with the situation in which workers did not receive
Field experiment
a pay rise but received the same final wage. The likelihood of donation was reduced when
Charitable giving
the workers were asked for a donation a week after the pay rise announcement rather than
Reciprocity
Affect immediately. These findings may be explained by either mood changes or mental accounting.
Self-serving biases Second, alerting the workers who were promised a pay rise to the forthcoming request a
week earlier significantly reduced donations compared with an unexpected request. This finding
suggests that subjects used the additional time to find excuses to donate less.

1. Introduction

Every year, millions of people donate money to charities. Because charitable giving rarely occurs in the absence of a direct
request, the specific details of the request are influential. For instance, recent studies have underscored the importance of social
aspects of the request, such as audience effects (Andreoni & Bernheim, 2009; Ariely et al., 2009), face-to-face requests (DellaVigna
et al., 2012; Landry et al., 2006), social pressure from acquaintances (Meer, 2011), and empathetic triggers (Andreoni et al., 2017).1
Other studies have found that solicitations can also influence donations by suggesting contribution amounts (Adena et al., 2014;
Reiley & Samek, 2018) or forcing individuals to make an active donation decision (Adena & Huck, 2020). This study focuses on the
timing of the solicitation. Specifically, it examines the effects of requesting a monetary donation following a pay rise announcement.
I addressed this question through a field experiment involving university students in Bogotá who received a fixed wage for a
one-off data-entry task. They were asked to make a donation out of their wage to one of two well-known charitable organizations.
Donations remained anonymous to avoid audience effects, social pressure, and reputational concerns. The experiment manipulated

✩ I thank the editor, two anonymous referees, Patricio Dalton, Christine Exley, Sebastian Fehrler, Eduardo Ferraz, Zack Grossman, José-Alberto Guerra,
Stanislao Maldonado, Erkut Ozbay, Ragan Petrie, Guillem Roig, and Paula Zamora for valuable comments and suggestions, and Diego Aycinena, Francesco
Bogliacino, and Darwin Cortés for sharing the work tasks that I used in the experiment. A special thank you is due to Sean Fahle for several insightful
conversations that shaped this project. I also thank the audiences at the Bogotá Experimental and Behavioral Economics Seminar, the ESA 2020 Global Online
Around-the-Clock Conference, Universidad de San Andrés, and the Centre for Experimental Research on Fairness, Inequality and Rationality at the Norwegian
School of Economics for their feedback. Steffanny Romero provided excellent research assistance, and María Camila Kairuz and Andrés F. Zambrano provided
crucial support for the implementation of the experiment. I gratefully acknowledge financial support from Universidad del Rosario, Colombia. This study was
approved by the Social Science Ethics Committee of Universidad del Rosario on 23 August 2019 (study 236-CS156). I thank Geoff Whyte, MBA, from Edanz
Group (https://www.edanz.com/ac) for editing a draft of this manuscript. Data and code for this study are available at https://osf.io/kapdy.
E-mail address: santiago.sautua@urosario.edu.co.
1 While these studies have focused on monetary donations, social aspects of the request may also influence non-monetary contributions. See, for instance, Meyer

and Tripodi (2021) for a field experiment on the role of social image concerns in pledges to donate blood when the request is made in public.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2022.102518
Received 24 September 2021; Received in revised form 24 March 2022; Accepted 25 March 2022
Available online 6 April 2022
0167-4870/© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
S.I. Sautua Journal of Economic Psychology 90 (2022) 102518

the following three features of the timing of the donation request: (1) whether the request occurred after a pay rise announcement;
(2) whether there was a time gap between the announcement and the donation request; and (3) whether the workers were aware of
the request in advance. Understanding the effects of these manipulations can be useful for designing effective solicitation strategies,
both in the workplace and elsewhere.2
I first examined the effect of unexpectedly asking workers to make a donation after the announcement of a 40% pay rise compared
with a situation in which they were initially offered the same final wage. By holding the final wage constant, this experiment avoided
income effects on charitable giving, which have been widely investigated (see, for example, Andreoni, 2006, Tonin & Vlassopoulos,
2017, and Drouvelis & Marx, 2021). Rather, this study focused on the effect on donations of the pay rise announcement itself, on
which there is a lack of systematic evidence.
What factors might influence donations after a pay rise beyond income effects? First, if workers perceive the pay rise as a gift—as
suggested by research on gift exchange at work, they might be inclined to extend the kind act from their employer by helping other
people through a donation. That is, the pay rise announcement might trigger upstream indirect reciprocity (Boyd & Richerson,
1989), thereby leading to more charitable giving even if the donation request is delayed.3
I further investigated the relevance of the time gap between the pay rise announcement and the donation request. Some subjects
were asked to donate immediately following the announcement, while others were asked a week later. Two distinct mechanisms
could have led the subjects who were approached immediately after the announcement to donate more than the others. First, the
subjects’ mood was likely to improve immediately following the announcement, and then wane. Several psychological studies have
found that people who feel good are more likely to help others (Carlson et al., 1988; Isen & Levin, 1972; Levin & Isen, 1975; Weyant,
1978), and that the impact of positive feelings on helping behavior tends to fade quite rapidly (Isen et al., 1976).4 Second, mental
accounting (Thaler, 1985, 1999) suggests that workers might perceive the pay rise as a gain in their “mental wage account” soon
after the announcement, but not a week later after the reference wage has been updated. Hence, the psychological cost of a donation
might be smaller in the short term because workers may offset the donation with the gain in their mental wage account.
The results showed that there was an increased likelihood of a donation after a pay rise announcement if the request was made
soon after the announcement, rather than a week later. Therefore, while there is no support for upstream indirect reciprocal behavior,
the observed giving patterns are consistent with both the mood and mental accounting hypotheses. Although the experimental design
did not enable direct underpinning of the relative importance of each mechanism, I present evidence suggesting the influence of
mood using the Self-Assessment Manikin (Bradley & Lang, 1994), a well-known non-verbal instrument.
Next, I examined the effect of alerting subjects regarding the forthcoming donation request a week in advance, as opposed
to surprising them with a request for an immediate donation. The predicted effect of this manipulation was ambiguous because
the theory and available evidence on prosocial behavior suggest two opposing hypotheses. On the one hand, anticipation of the
forthcoming solicitation allowed subjects to adjust their consumption plans (Kőszegi & Rabin, 2006, 2007), which was expected to
increase charitable giving. On the other hand, knowledge of the forthcoming request provided subjects with the opportunity to find
excuses to give less (Exley & Petrie, 2018), which was expected to reduce giving.
The results showed that prior knowledge of the request for a donation reduced giving, suggesting that the subjects used the
lead-up time to develop self-serving justifications to give less rather than to develop giving plans. Furthermore, the reduction in
donations was significant: subjects who were given a week’s notice of the donation request donated, on average, 37% less.
While previous research such as DellaVigna et al. (2012) and Andreoni et al. (2017) has documented that some people choose
to avoid an imminent donation request, there is little evidence of the impact of informing people in advance about an unavoidable
request. The study by Exley and Petrie (2018) is, to my knowledge, the only previous study to have addressed the latter question.
They found, using an online field experiment, that alerting individuals to a solicitation that would occur only a few seconds later
reduced the likelihood of giving. Conceptually, the present study builds on their study by testing two behavioral hypotheses: one
regarding the role of plans and the other regarding the role of self-deception. By introducing a 1-week gap between the moment
when subjects learn about the forthcoming request and the request itself, this design provided sufficient time for giving plans to
register (Heffetz, 2021), thereby providing a reasonable basis on which to test the hypothesis that plans can increase giving. However,
self-serving justifications appear to have prevailed, resulting in a reduction in donations. Hence, this study shows that although
planning prompts are usually effective in inducing desired behavioral changes (see Rogers et al., 2015 for an overview), prompting
individuals to form giving plans can sometimes backfire.
The experimental design lends itself to an evaluation of the joint effect of a 1-week gap between the pay rise announcement and
the donation request, and anticipation of the request. It was possible to compare the situation in which subjects faced an unexpected
request immediately following a pay rise announcement with that in which they faced an anticipated request a week after the pay
rise announcement. The results showed a significant difference in giving behavior, with subjects who were given a week’s notice of
the request for a donation giving, on average, 44% less.

2 The experimental setting is similar to payroll giving schemes, whereby employees are asked to sign up to donate part of their salary to charity each month.

However, there are some important differences, which I discuss in the concluding section.
3 This effect is expected to be larger among workers who have a higher personal inclination to respond to kind actions with kind behavior. I did not explore

such heterogeneity in this study. See Han and Wibral (2020) on the relevance of individual differences in positive (as well as negative) reciprocity for organ
donation attitude and behavior.
4 Consistent with the psychological studies, two economic studies, Capra (2004) and Kessler et al. (2021), provided evidence of an immediate positive effect

of good mood on generosity. Capra (2004) found that an induced good mood increased transfers in a laboratory dictator game compared with an induced bad
mood. In a laboratory-in-the-field experiment, Kessler et al. (2021) found that increases in incidental happiness resulting from events in a National Football
League game led to larger charitable donations from an experimental endowment.

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The rest of this paper is organized as follows. The next section presents a theoretical framework to analyze how charitable giving
is affected by a request for a donation following a pay rise. Section 3 describes the experiment and presents the testable hypotheses
regarding giving behavior. Section 4 discusses the empirical findings. Section 5 analyzes the potential role of mood in increasing
donations immediately following the pay rise announcement. Section 6 concludes.

2. Theoretical framework

2.1. Setup

An individual is hired for a one-off job for which he or she receives a wage 𝑤 that is not contingent on performance. The worker
is then asked to make an anonymous donation to a charitable organization.5 After donating an amount 𝑑, the worker is left with a
net income of 𝑤 − 𝑑.
Following Kessler et al. (2021), I model the worker’s private utility 𝑈 as a function of his or her own consumption and his or
her exogenous mood, denoted by the parameter 𝑚 ∈ [0, 1]. Thus, the worker’s private utility is 𝑈 (𝑤 − 𝑑; 𝑚). I make the standard
(𝑤−𝑑;𝑚) 2 𝑈 (𝑤−𝑑;𝑚)
assumptions that 𝑈 is strictly increasing and concave in relation to own consumption, that is, 𝜕𝑈𝜕(𝑤−𝑑) > 0 and 𝜕 𝜕(𝑤−𝑑) 2 ≤ 0.
Furthermore, I assume that 𝑈 is strictly increasing in mood, that is, 𝑈 (𝑤 − 𝑑; 𝑚2 ) > 𝑈 (𝑤 − 𝑑; 𝑚1 ) for 𝑚2 > 𝑚1 .
The worker has social preferences toward the recipient, and thus cares about his or her well-being. These social preferences reflect
either pure altruism (Becker, 1974) or a preference for giving in itself, fueled by a “warm glow” or “the joy of giving” (Andreoni,
2 𝐺(𝑑)
1989, 1990). Following DellaVigna et al. (2012), social preferences are captured by the function 𝐺(𝑑), where 𝜕𝐺(𝑑)𝜕𝑑
> 0 and 𝜕 𝜕𝑑 2 < 0.
When deciding whether to donate, the worker might feel torn between two desires. On the one hand, he or she would like
to spend his or her income on their own consumption. On the other hand, he or she would like to give to charity what they
believe the beneficiary deserves. Standard models of prosocial behavior represent this conflict between desires as a mere trade-off
between consumption and social preferences. In contrast to these models, I assume that such internal conflict also produces cognitive
dissonance (Festinger, 1957; Wicklund & Brehm, 1976). As we shall see next, this approach provides a natural way of analyzing
self-deception issues. Let 𝜙 denote the amount that the worker believes is the “right” donation to charity. A worker who gives less
than 𝜙 may experience some displeasure at feeling selfish. Drawing on Rabin (1994) and Konow (2000), the degree of discomfort
is represented by the dissonance function 𝐷(𝜙 − 𝑑), where 𝐷 > 0 if 𝜙 − 𝑑 > 0 and 𝐷 = 0 if 𝜙 − 𝑑 ≤ 0. Additionally, 𝜕𝐷(𝜙−𝑑)
𝜕(𝜙−𝑑)
> 0 and
𝜕 2 𝐷(𝜙−𝑑)
𝜕(𝜙−𝑑)2
> 0 if 𝜙 − 𝑑 > 0.6
The worker chooses not only the amount of their donation, 𝑑, but also 𝜙. He or she may manipulate their belief about the
right donation to reduce the displeasure caused by cognitive dissonance (Konow, 2000; Rabin, 1994). This manipulation implies a
departure from a detached, intellectually honest belief about the right donation that is denoted by 𝜂, where 0 ≤ 𝜂 ≤ 𝑤. This honest
belief depends on the principles of distributive justice, such as equity and need (Konow, 2010), and social norms of kindness, such
as reciprocity. Together, these principles and norms determine the recipient’s worthiness (Fong, 2007). Believing that the right
donation is smaller than one’s detached view would indicate (i.e., choosing 𝜙 < 𝜂) may be costly for at least two reasons. First,
searching for excuses to give less than what is felt to be the right amount demands cognitive effort. Second, when the individual
realizes that he or she is engaging in self-serving rationalization, he or she may experience discomfort. Drawing again on Rabin
(1994) and Konow (2000), the psychological cost of self-deception regarding the right donation is captured by 𝐶(𝜂 − 𝜙), where
2 𝐶(𝜂−𝜙)
𝐶 > 0 if 𝜂 − 𝜙 > 0 and 𝐶 = 0 if 𝜂 − 𝜙 = 0. Additionally, 𝜕𝐶(𝜂−𝜙)
𝜕(𝜂−𝜙)
> 0 and 𝜕𝜕(𝜂−𝜙)2 > 0 if 𝜂 − 𝜙 > 0.
The worker chooses 𝑑, the donation, and 𝜙, the belief about the right donation, to maximize his or her utility. Utility maximization
requires balancing the utility of consumption with social preferences, disutility of dissonance, and disutility of holding dishonest
beliefs about the recipient’s worthiness. Formally, the worker solves the following problem:

𝑀𝑎𝑥𝑑,𝜙 𝑊 (𝑑, 𝜙) = 𝑈 (𝑤 − 𝑑; 𝑚) + 𝐺(𝑑) − 𝐷(𝜙 − 𝑑) − 𝐶(𝜂 − 𝜙) (1)

subject to 0 ≤ 𝑑 ≤ 𝑤, 0 ≤ 𝜙 ≤ 𝜂.
𝑈 is concave, 𝐺 is strictly concave, and 𝐷 and 𝐶 are convex, and therefore the objective function 𝑊 is strictly concave. Hence,
there is a unique maximum. The model predicts the worker’s optimal choices of 𝑑 and 𝜙 in several situations. Hereafter, the analysis
focuses on the worker’s giving behavior because in the experiment only donations are observed. Online Appendix A contains the
corresponding results for 𝜙, together with all proofs.

5 This implies that neither the employer, nor the charity, nor anybody else can ascertain the identity of the donor. Because the anonymity of the donation

prevents social-signaling, “external” audience effects (Andreoni & Bernheim, 2009; Ariely et al., 2009) and social pressure (DellaVigna et al., 2012; Meer, 2011)
are excluded. However, “internal” audience effects remain—after all, the individual knows about his or her donation, and thus could act as his or her own
audience, as suggested long ago by Adam Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Smith, 1759). Therefore, self-image concerns might still affect giving behavior
(see Tonin & Vlassopoulos, 2013, Grossman & Van der Weele, 2017, and Adena & Huck, 2020 for further discussion). However, the conceptual framework
presented here avoids the effect of self-image because its influence does not vary across the experimental treatments.
6 The displeasure from dissonance is distinct from guilt as conceptualized in psychological game theory, where guilt arises when one fails to live up to

others’ expectations (Battigalli & Dufwenberg, 2007). Guilt, defined in these terms, does not play an important role here. Recipients are unaware that a donation
decision is being made, and therefore it is difficult for donors to understand the recipients’ expectations regarding the allocation. Indeed, there might be no such
expectation. Therefore, donors find it difficult to think about how much they might disappoint recipients with their decision. However, guilt might be related to
dissonance if a broader definition is considered, such as that of Baumeister et al. (1994), which associates guilt with the violation of an intrinsic moral standard,
regardless of whether others know about the incident.

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S.I. Sautua Journal of Economic Psychology 90 (2022) 102518

2.2. Predictions about giving behavior

Consider a worker who is due to be paid today and faces an unexpected donation request shortly before receiving their pay. The
worker’s donation is automatically deducted from his or her wage.
A basic result is related to the relationship between the intellectually honest belief about the right donation, 𝜂, and the optimal
donation:

Lemma 1 (Recipient’s Worthiness). The worker’s donation is increasing in 𝜂.

The intuition behind Lemma 1 is that the recipient’s greater worthiness increases self-deception costs, and thus leads to the belief
that the recipient actually deserves a larger donation, which then increases dissonance and induces the worker to give more.
Next, the analysis considers how an unexpected earlier pay rise affects the donation that the worker makes. Consistent with
the experimental design, I assume that the rise was unrelated to the worker’s previous performance. The analysis is focused on the
effects of the pay rise on giving behavior through psychological channels, thereby avoiding income effects.

2.2.1. Requesting a donation after a pay rise

On the basis of the sizable body of literature on the relationship between pay rises and worker productivity, I assume that the
worker construes the unexpected pay rise as a gift from the employer because it unexpectedly improves their original employment
conditions. Thus, it is possible that the perception of the pay rise as a gift activates a social norm of kindness known as upstream
indirect reciprocity (Boyd & Richerson, 1989) whereby the worker, who has been treated kindly by the employer, wants to
reciprocate by being kind to a third party.7 Crucially, if the rise triggers indirect reciprocity, it will increase the worker’s honest
belief regarding the right donation, 𝜂.8 Combining this assumption with Lemma 1 yields the following proposition:

Proposition 1 (Upstream Indirect Reciprocity). Consider a worker who is promised a pay rise. If the rise induces upstream indirect
reciprocity, the worker’s donation will be larger than it would have been if he or she had already been receiving the same final wage.

The pay rise announcement also affects the worker’s mood, 𝑚. As we shall see in Section 5, elicited mood improves immediately
after the announcement, and then gradually wanes. If changes in mood are to impact the worker’s charitable giving, they must affect
(𝑤−𝑑;𝑚)
the marginal utility of consumption, 𝜕𝑈𝜕(𝑤−𝑑) . On the basis of evidence indicating that mood and material payoffs are substitutes
across a variety of economic decisions (Kessler et al., 2021), I assume that the marginal utility of consumption decreases with a
𝜕𝑈 (𝑤−𝑑;𝑚 ) 𝜕𝑈 (𝑤−𝑑;𝑚 )
more positive mood, that is, 𝜕(𝑤−𝑑) 2 < 𝜕(𝑤−𝑑) 1 for 𝑚2 > 𝑚1 . The following proposition summarizes the effect of the pay rise on
giving behavior through its influence on the worker’s mood:

Proposition 2 (Mood). Consider a worker who is promised a pay rise. Let 𝛥𝑇 denote the time gap between the announcement of the pay
rise and the donation request. If the marginal utility of consumption is strictly decreasing in mood, the worker’s donation will decrease with
𝛥𝑇 .

Intuitively, the boost in mood resulting from the pay rise announcement temporarily reduces the marginal utility of consumption,
thereby reducing the marginal cost of giving in the short term. However, over time, the boost in mood wanes and the marginal utility
of consumption reverts to its baseline level (before the pay rise announcement), which leads to decreased willingness to give.9
Even if the marginal utility of consumption were unaffected by mood changes, mental accounting (Thaler, 1985, 1999) would
predict the negative relationship between giving and 𝛥𝑇 stated in Proposition 2. The key is how the worker codes flows from the
“mental wage account”—the inflow as a result of the pay rise and any potential outflow as a result of a donation. When 𝛥𝑇 = 0, the
worker perceives the unexpected pay rise as a gain relative to their initial wage, and may offset the outflow as a result of a small
donation against this larger gain. In this case, rather than imposing a direct loss, the donation simply reduces the gain from the pay
rise. By contrast, when 𝛥𝑇 is large, the worker no longer perceives the pay rise as a gain when he or she is asked for a donation
because by then, the reference wage has been updated. This makes a donation seem like a direct loss. In summary, because a small
donation simply reduces the gain when 𝛥𝑇 = 0 but represents a loss when 𝛥𝑇 is large, the worker has a greater incentive to give
when 𝛥𝑇 = 0 than when 𝛥𝑇 is large. Online Appendix B provides a formal discussion.

7 The worker may also want to reciprocate by being kind to the employer, for example, by being more productive. This would be an instance of positive

direct reciprocity, which I avoid here to keep the focus on charitable giving. I return to this point in Section 4.1.
8 This is perhaps more evident if the worker does not have a clear idea about how much money the recipient “needs,” which is the case in the field

experiment. However, even if the recipient’s need were salient, indirect reciprocity could lead the worker to think that the recipient deserves more than what
he or she just “needs.”
9 Instead of affecting the marginal utility of consumption, mood might affect the intensity of social preferences, so that the direct utility of a donation is

𝐺(𝑑; 𝑚). In this case, it is natural to assume that a more positive mood raises both the total and marginal utility of a donation, that is, 𝐺(𝑑; 𝑚2 ) > 𝐺(𝑑; 𝑚1 )
𝜕𝐺(𝑑;𝑚2 ) 𝜕𝐺(𝑑;𝑚1 )
and 𝜕𝑑
> 𝜕𝑑
for 𝑚2 > 𝑚1 . Online Appendix A.3 shows that Proposition 2 also holds under these alternative assumptions. Therefore, the qualitative
relationship between mood and giving behavior does not depend on the precise channel through which mood affects utility.

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S.I. Sautua Journal of Economic Psychology 90 (2022) 102518

2.2.2. Unexpected versus expected donation requests

Thus far, the model has considered a situation in which the worker is unexpectedly asked for a donation following a pay rise.
Now, this situation is compared with another situation in which the worker learns about the forthcoming request for a donation in
advance. Depending on the prevailing mechanism, the anticipation of the request either increases or decreases giving.
One way in which the anticipation of the request for a donation could affect giving is through its influence on the worker’s
perceived reference point for his or her own consumption.
When it is an unexpected request, the worker experiences some displeasure from giving because he or she was not expecting a
reduction in his or her own consumption. The theory of reference-dependent preferences developed by Kőszegi and Rabin (2006)
suggests that 𝑤 is perceived as the reference consumption at the moment of the request. Hence, any donation feels like a loss
of consumption relative to the referent. Let −𝛾 [𝑈 (𝑤; 𝑚) − 𝑈 (𝑤 − 𝑑; 𝑚)] be the psychological disutility from giving 𝑑 following an
unexpected donation request, where 𝛾 > 0.10
By contrast, when the forthcoming request is announced with sufficient notice, the worker has the opportunity to form a giving
plan. Applying Kőszegi and Rabin’s model again, I assume that a worker who plans to donate some amount perceives their wage net
of the donation, 𝑤−𝑑, as the reference point for their own consumption once the request materializes. Because giving was anticipated,
the donation does not feel like a loss. Hence, there is no psychological disutility from giving.11
In summary, the worker’s utility is given by 𝑊 (𝑑, 𝜙) = 𝑈 (𝑤−𝑑; 𝑚)+𝐺(𝑑)−𝛾 [𝑈 (𝑤; 𝑚)−𝑈 (𝑤−𝑑; 𝑚)]⋅1𝑆 −𝐷(𝜙−𝑑)−𝐶(𝜂 −𝜙), where
1𝑆 is an indicator that equals 1 if the donation request is unexpected and 0 otherwise. This leads to the following proposition:

Proposition 3 (Reference Point for Own Consumption). If the anticipation of the request reduces the worker’s reference point for their own
consumption, the worker gives more when the request is anticipated rather than when it is unexpected.

Another way in which anticipation of the request may affect giving is through its effect on the cost of self-deception. When it is an
unexpected request, the worker has little time to develop excuses to give less than the right amount. By contrast, when the request
is anticipated sufficiently in advance, the worker has significantly more time to develop self-serving justifications, which reduces
the self-deception costs.12 In this situation, the worker will find it less difficult to convince himself or herself that a smaller donation
is justified, and thus that he or she should give less. To capture this effect, let 𝐶𝑆 and 𝐶𝐴 denote the self-deception cost functions
𝜕𝐶𝐴 (𝜂−𝜙) 𝜕𝐶𝑆 (𝜂−𝜙)
when the donation request is unexpected and when it is anticipated, respectively, such that 𝐶𝐴 (.) < 𝐶𝑆 (.) and 𝜕(𝜂−𝜙) < 𝜕(𝜂−𝜙) .
The worker’s utility is given by 𝑊 (𝑑, 𝜙) = 𝑈 (𝑤 − 𝑑; 𝑚) + 𝐺(𝑑) − 𝐷(𝜙 − 𝑑) − [𝐶𝑆 (𝜂 − 𝜙) ⋅ 1𝑆 + 𝐶𝐴 (𝜂 − 𝜙) ⋅ (1 − 1𝑆 )]. This leads to the
following proposition:

Proposition 4 (Self-deception Costs). If anticipation of the donation request reduces self-deception costs, the worker gives less when the
request is anticipated rather than when it is unexpected.

3. Experimental design

This section summarizes the design and procedures of the field experiment. First, I describe the setting and donation decision.
Then, I present each treatment and the testable hypotheses regarding giving behavior based on the model discussed in Section 2.
Next, I describe the elicitation of the subjects’ mood. Finally, I describe the study sample. Online Appendix D presents the
experimental instructions and procedures translated into English.

3.1. General aspects

A field experiment was conducted between October 2019 and March 2020 at Universidad del Rosario, Bogotá, using subjects
randomly drawn from the student pool managed by the Rosario Experimental and Behavioral Economics Laboratory (REBEL). Using
the Online Recruitment System for Economic Experiments (Greiner, 2004), students from various majors were invited to participate
in two 1-hour sessions, 1 week apart, at the REBEL. Invitations were sent at various times, and only a unique subset of randomly
chosen individuals from the large subject pool received the invitation each time. By sending each invitation to a unique random
sub-sample (rather than to the entire subject pool), I minimized the chances that friends or acquaintances ended up participating in
different treatment groups and talking about the study between sessions 1 and 2, which could have generated contamination across
treatments.
The recruitment message informed subjects that they would be paid a flat wage at the end of the second session if they completed
the study. While most subjects were initially offered 30,000 Colombian pesos (COP) (equivalent to approximately 9 USD), some
subjects were offered 42,000 COP (approximately 12.5 USD). Those subjects whose initial wage was 30,000 COP later received

10 See Fahle and Sautua (2021) for experimental evidence that giving sometimes feels like a loss, implying a psychological cost.
11 In practice, the time gap between the announcement of the forthcoming request and the request must be sufficiently long to allow the giving plan to “sink
in” and thus change the referent for own consumption (Heffetz, 2021). Although it is difficult to determine how long this time gap should be, common sense
suggests that a few minutes will not be sufficient. Kőszegi and Rabin (2007) illustrated this point with a nice example: “When somebody finds out 5 min ahead
of time that she will definitely not receive a long-expected $100, she presumably immediately adjusts her expectations to the new situation, but 5 min later,
she will still assess not receiving the money as a loss” (p. 1051).
12 Exley and Petrie (2018) conjectured that individuals may use this time to “feel less compelled to be prosocial, perhaps by developing their own justifications

for or summoning the mental strength for declining the request” (p. 153).

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S.I. Sautua Journal of Economic Psychology 90 (2022) 102518

Table 1
Summary of experimental design.
Treatment Initial wage Final wage Pay rise Donation Anticipated
(COP) (COP) announcement request request?
HighWage 42,000 42,000 – Beginning of s2 No
RiseGap 30,000 42,000 End of s1 Beginning of s2 No
RiseNoGap 30,000 42,000 Beginning of s2 Beginning of s2 No
Anticipation 30,000 42,000 End of s1 Beginning of s2 Yes

Note: s1 (s2) stands for ‘‘session 1 (2).’’

a pay rise of 12,000 COP (i.e., a 40% rise), so all subjects who completed the study received a final wage of 42,000 COP. The
recruitment message did not contain any specific information about the study other than the initial wage.
On arrival at the laboratory, each subject was seated at a separate carrel in front of a computer terminal with an Internet browser.
The subjects were informed that they would work individually on four tasks—two in each session—to assist researchers from
the Economics Department at Universidad del Rosario in several research projects. All task instructions followed a predetermined
protocol.
Before the instructions for the first task were presented, the subjects followed written instructions to develop a unique participant
code that would be used to track their work and match their responses to questionnaires across sessions. The personal code was
known only to the subject. This procedure was transparent, and guaranteed the anonymity of the information collected. The subjects
completed an online questionnaire on demographics (gender, age, number of semesters of study, and academic major) and part of
the streamlined preference survey module introduced by Falk et al. (2016). This module includes simple non-incentivized questions
that provide experimentally validated measures of risk aversion, time discounting, trust, altruism, and reciprocity. Demographics
and self-reported preferences were used as control variables in the empirical analysis.

3.2. The donation decision

The subjects were asked to make an anonymous donation that would be automatically deducted from their wage at the end of the
second session. They could choose how much to donate to either of two well-known charities: Techo (an NGO that builds temporary
houses for people who live in shelters in Latin America) and the Colombian Red Cross. Their donations were supplemented with a
25% matching donation from the Economics Department. Subjects were also told that their donations would be forwarded to the
charities at the end of the academic semester and that receipts would be kept at the Financial Management Office of the Economics
Department.
Immediately following the donation request, and before making a decision, the subjects were given 5 min to learn more about the
two charities by visiting their websites.13 By giving subjects time to reflect before making their decision, automatic giving behavior
was minimized. The subjects indicated their donation decisions by filling out a paper form on which they were asked how much
money (in COP) they wanted to donate and to which organization. After filling out the form and adding their personal code, they
submitted the form in a closed envelope.14

3.3. Treatments and testable hypotheses regarding giving behavior

The subjects were randomly allocated to one of five treatment groups. Next, I discuss the four main treatments, which I used to
test the central hypotheses of this study. I discuss the supplementary treatment in Section 4.1 and Online Appendix C.
The four main treatments varied in terms of the following three dimensions: (1) whether subjects received a pay rise; (2) whether
there was a time gap between the announcement of the pay rise and the donation request; and (3) whether the donation request
was anticipated. Table 1 summarizes the experimental design and Table 2 summarizes the corresponding hypotheses about giving
behavior.
Subjects in the HighWage group were initially offered a wage of 42,000 COP, and thus did not receive a pay rise. By contrast,
once subjects in the RiseGap group finished their work in the first session, they were told that because of increased availability of
funds, their initial wage of 30,000 COP would be increased by 12,000 COP if they finished the second session. A week later, before
they performed any additional work, both groups were asked to make a donation, which would be deducted from their wage at the
end of the session.15

13 Unfortunately, because there is no record of whether subjects visited the websites, it is not possible to test whether click-through rates changed in response

to the experimental treatments.

14 By requiring subjects to make an active donation decision, the choice architecture prevented them from conveniently overlooking the donation request.

Therefore, as argued by Adena and Huck (2020), non-donors could not fool themselves about their generosity by thinking that they had not made a decision. Adena
and Huck (2020) demonstrated that individuals who were not forced to indicate their decision during an online fundraising campaign donated, on average,
significantly less. Apparently, these individuals exploited the opportunity to overlook the donation request and give less while preserving their self-image.
15 I chose a 40% wage increase because it seemed to be sufficiently large to induce changes in giving behavior, but not large enough to raise suspicions

among subjects about the employer’s motives.

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S.I. Sautua Journal of Economic Psychology 90 (2022) 102518

Table 2
Summary of testable hypotheses about giving behavior.
Hypothesis aboutdonation Theoreticalsupport Mechanism(s)
𝑑𝑅𝐺 > 𝑑𝐻𝑊 Proposition 1 Upstream indirect reciprocity
𝑑𝑅𝑁𝐺 > 𝑑𝑅𝐺 Propositions 2 and A1 Mood and mental accounting
𝑑𝐴 > 𝑑𝑅𝐺 Proposition 3 Reduction of consumption referent
𝑑𝐴 < 𝑑𝑅𝐺 Proposition 4 Reduction of self-deception costs

Note: 𝐻𝑊 : HighWage; 𝑅𝐺: RiseGap; 𝑅𝑁𝐺: RiseNoGap; 𝐴: Anticipation.

A comparison of donations between the HighWage and RiseGap groups identified the effect of a pay rise on giving when there
was a 1-week gap between the pay rise announcement and the donation request. Importantly, this comparison held the final wage
constant, and thus excluded income effects. Proposition 1 predicted that giving in the RiseGap group would exceed that in the
HighWage group if the pay rise activated upstream indirect reciprocity among subjects in the RiseGap group. While the impact of
mood cannot be completely eliminated by design, psychological research suggests that any improvement in mood following the pay
rise announcement was likely to have dissipated by the beginning of the second session. In fact, this was confirmed by the dynamics
of elicited mood, as we shall see in Section 5.
In the RiseNoGap group, the pay rise was announced at the beginning of the second session, thereby eliminating the 1-week gap
between the pay rise announcement and the donation request that applied to the RiseGap group. The RiseNoGap treatment was
otherwise identical to the RiseGap treatment. Proposition 2 predicts more giving in the RiseNoGap group than in the RiseGap group
if mood improved soon after the pay rise announcement, and then waned. Proposition A1 in Online Appendix B also predicts more
giving in the RiseNoGap group provided that subjects have a “mental wage account.”16
Subjects in the Anticipation group learned about the pay rise at the end of the first session. Furthermore, they were informed
that they would be asked to make a donation in the following session, and were encouraged to visit the websites of the relevant
charities before the first session ended. When they returned a week later, they were reminded of the donation request and then made
a decision. Thus, the only difference in design with respect to the RiseGap group was that the request for a donation was anticipated
rather than unexpected. Proposition 3 predicts more giving in the Anticipation group than in the RiseGap group if anticipation of
the request acts as a planning prompt, thereby reducing the psychological cost of reducing consumption.17 By contrast, Proposition 4
predicts less giving in the Anticipation group if expecting the request makes self-deception less costly.

3.4. Elicitation of mood

The subjects’ mood was elicited using the SAM (Bradley & Lang, 1994), a well-known and validated non-verbal instrument.
The SAM requires subjects to select one of nine manikins that best expresses their current feelings, ranging from very negative
(–4) to very positive (4). The subjects completed the SAM twice, once in each session. In the first session, completion of the SAM
followed the pay rise announcement in the RiseGap and Anticipation groups and preceded the announcement about the forthcoming
donation request in the Anticipation group. In the second session, completion of the SAM followed the pay rise announcement in
the RiseNoGap group and preceded the donation request in the HighWage, RiseGap, and RiseNoGap groups and the reminder of
the donation request in the Anticipation group.

3.5. Sample description

The full sample consisted of 397 subjects who completed at least the first session. Of these, 359 (90.4%) completed both sessions.
There were no statistically significant differences in the attrition rate across groups (𝑝 = 0.934, Fisher’s exact test; see Table A1 in
the Online Appendix for details). To ensure consistency, hereafter the analysis is restricted to the 359 subjects who completed both
sessions. There were 72 subjects in the HighWage group, 76 in the RiseGap group, 64 in the RiseNoGap group, 74 in the Anticipation
group, and 73 in the Early group (the supplementary treatment discussed in Section 4.1 and Online Appendix C). Table A2 in the
Online Appendix presents summary statistics regarding the subjects’ demographics (gender, academic major, age, and number of
semesters of study) and self-reported preferences.
In principle, self-selection into the study might be a concern because the HighWage group was initially offered a higher wage than
the other groups. To assess whether differential self-selection was an issue, I conducted an omnibus test based on a logit regression
of group assignment (HighWage group versus other groups) on demographics and self-reported preferences. The null hypothesis that
subjects did not differentially self-select into the HighWage group implies that all coefficients in the regression equal 0. Although the
proportion of economics and finance majors was lower in the HighWage group, the omnibus test did not reject the null hypothesis
at conventional significance levels (𝜒 2 = 13.87, 𝑝 = 0.127). Nevertheless, I controlled for accidental imbalances across groups by
including demographics and self-reported preferences as additional regressors in the empirical analysis.

16 It is possible that subjects perceived the additional income as a windfall rather than as extra earnings. The mental accounting hypothesis is able to

accommodate this nuance. This is because the key element of such hypothesis is whether (and when) the pay rise feels like a gain in the worker’s mental
accounting system, regardless of whether the pay rise is perceived as a windfall or extra earnings.
17 In practice, the anticipation of the request might also alleviate planning constraints that would otherwise make unexpected consumption cuts materially

costly. This reinforces the potential for anticipation to increase donations.

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S.I. Sautua Journal of Economic Psychology 90 (2022) 102518

Fig. 1. Percentage of subjects making a donation by treatment group. Note: Bars indicate Clopper–Pearson 95% confidence intervals for all percentages.

Fig. 2. Average positive donation (as a percentage of the final wage) by treatment group. Note: Bars indicate 95% confidence intervals for the means.

4. Empirical results

Figure A1 in the Online Appendix displays histograms of the amounts donated by subjects in each treatment group as a percentage
of the final wage. Fig. 1 shows the percentage of subjects in each group who donated. The RiseNoGap group had the highest
percentage of donors (79.7%), followed by the RiseGap and HighWage groups (71.1% and 70.8%, respectively) and the Anticipation
group (59.5%). Fig. 2 restricts the sample to donors and shows the average donation in each group as a percentage of the final wage.18
The average donation was virtually identical in the HighWage, RiseGap, and RiseNoGap groups (10.1% in the first two groups and
10.4% in the latter group) and smallest in the Anticipation group (7.3%).
To further analyze the treatment effects on giving behavior and test the research hypotheses, I conducted econometric analyses.
For each group comparison of interest, I estimated two econometric models: a Probit model of the likelihood of giving and a Tobit
model of the amount given as a proportion of the wage. Both models included a treatment dummy variable as the main independent
variable and demographics and self-reported preferences as control variables.19 I used the Probit coefficient estimates to calculate
the average treatment effects on the probability of giving (extensive margin), and the Tobit coefficient estimates to calculate the
treatment effects on the expected value of donations conditional on donations being positive (intensive margin).20

18 In all analyses of the amounts donated by the RiseNoGap group, one subject who donated their entire wage was excluded to avoid bias.
19 The results are essentially the same if I estimate a single Probit/Tobit model using observations from all groups simultaneously instead of estimating the
treatment effects in pairwise comparisons. I opted for the presentation with pairwise comparisons for convenience of exposition.
20 See McDonald and Moffitt (1980) for a discussion of marginal effects in a Tobit model. Specifically, Eq. (7) in that article indicates how to calculate the

average treatment effect on donations among subjects who already make a donation in the absence of the treatment.

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S.I. Sautua Journal of Economic Psychology 90 (2022) 102518

Table 3 shows estimates of the average treatment effects. For each group comparison, the first (second) column shows the
estimate of the treatment effect on the extensive (intensive) margin of giving. At the bottom of each column, the corresponding
control group is listed, and each treatment effect is expressed as a percentage of the average value of the dependent variable in the
control group. The 𝑝-values of several hypothesis tests regarding the treatment effects are also included at the bottom of the table.
Whenever there was a clear prediction for the treatment effect, I used a one-tailed test, and whenever the prediction was ambiguous
(because the direction of the effect depended on the prevailing mechanism), I used a two-tailed test.

4.1. Unexpected donation request following a pay rise

Columns 1 and 2 show the effect of a pay rise announcement on charitable giving when there is a 1-week gap between the pay
rise announcement and the donation request. That is, I compared the RiseGap and HighWage groups. Contrary to Proposition 1, the
pay rise did not significantly increase giving on either the extensive margin (𝑝 = 0.522, one-tailed 𝑧-test) or the intensive margin
(𝑝 = 0.557, one-tailed 𝑧-test). Hence, there was no support for the hypothesis suggesting upstream indirect reciprocal behavior
resulting from the pay rise.
While more evidence is required to determine the reasons for this finding, the results from a companion study on worker
productivity, reported in Sautua (2021), enable us to discard some possible reasons. Is it possible that the pay rise announcement
failed to activate indirect reciprocity because all of the subjects eventually received the same wage? This hypothesis can be
disregarded because the workers who were promised the pay rise were significantly more productive than those who initially
received the same final wage, suggesting that the pay rise announcement was sufficient to induce direct reciprocal behavior. Is it
possible that the pay rise announcement activated indirect reciprocity in the short term, but it faded after a week? This hypothesis
can also be disregarded because the pay rise announcement still induced direct reciprocal behavior a week later. Therefore, taken
together, the evidence from both studies indicates that the pay rise announcement triggered direct reciprocity but failed to trigger
upstream indirect reciprocity. Whether a pay rise could induce indirect reciprocal behavior under other circumstances remains an
open question.21
Note that we can go beyond the abovementioned one-tailed test of indirect reciprocal behavior based on Proposition 1 and
conclude that the distributions of donations in the RiseGap and HighWage groups are indistinguishable (𝑝 = 0.957 for the extensive
margin and 𝑝 = 0.886 for the intensive margin, two-tailed 𝑧-tests). On the basis of this result, hereafter I pool the observations from
these two groups in all the tests in which the RiseGap group is the control group with the aim of boosting statistical power.
Columns 3 and 4 show the effect of removing the 1-week gap between the pay rise announcement and the donation request by
comparing the RiseNoGap group with the RiseGap group. This intervention had a statistically significant effect on the likelihood
of giving, which increased by 11.2 percentage points (𝑝 = 0.044, one-tailed 𝑧-test).22 The 15.8% increase in the probability of
giving is consistent with Proposition 2 and A1, suggesting that either a boost in mood, or mental accounting, or both prompted
donations by workers who had just been promised a pay rise. Section 5 presents evidence suggesting the influence of mood. While
the intervention also raised the average contribution of workers who were already making a donation (column 4), this effect is not
statistically significant (𝑝 = 0.156, one-tailed 𝑧-test).
In some settings where the donation request occurs promptly after the pay rise announcement, workers may be asked to commit
to donate a share of their future income rather than to make an immediate donation. That is, the donation is deducted from the
worker’s earnings at a later date once the worker is paid.23 To explore this variation of the RiseNoGap treatment, I introduced the
supplementary Early treatment. Subjects in the Early group were offered a 30,000 COP base wage, were promised a 12,000 COP pay
rise at the end of the first session, and were immediately asked to make a donation that would be deducted from their final wage a
week later. The Early group resembled the RiseNoGap group in that there was no gap between the pay rise announcement and the
donation request. However, the donation decision was made 1 week earlier in the Early group. This change had two implications:
(1) it created a 1-week gap between the donation decision and the point at which the donation was deducted from earnings, and (2)
it added 1 week to the gap between the donation decision and the point at which the gift was actually transferred to the recipient
(at the end of the academic semester).
Models of intertemporal prosocial choice, such as those proposed by Shapiro (2020) and Chopra et al. (2021), imply that the
net effect of these two features is ambiguous (see Online Appendix C for more details). I found that the percentage of donors in
the Early group was 76.71% (56 of 73 subjects) and the average donation was 9.5% of the final wage. While both the likelihood of
giving and the average donation were smaller in the Early group than in the RiseNoGap group, the differences were not statistically
significant (𝑝 = 0.412 for the extensive margin and 𝑝 = 0.178 for the intensive margin, two-tailed 𝑧-tests). Therefore, asking subjects
to make a donation decision 1 week earlier had no systematic effect on giving behavior.

21 Two field studies also tested for the occurrence of upstream indirect reciprocity, although in different settings, and the findings were mixed. Using

observational data, Apeldoorn and Schram (2016) failed to find evidence of reciprocal behavior. They studied an international online community in which
travelers request and provide services (namely, travel tips and guidance) to each other free of charge. Travelers were no more likely to provide these services
if they had previously obtained them from third parties. However, using a natural field experiment set in a large car park in Brisbane, Australia, Mujcic and
Leibbrandt (2018) found that drivers were more than twice as likely to stop for another driver after someone else had stopped for them.
22 If the observations from the RiseGap group were not combined with those from the HighWage group, the point estimate would be 0.103 (s.e. 0.072;

𝑝 = 0.075).
23 See Breman (2011) for a field study of commitments to give in the future conducted in Sweden. In that study, however, the donation request did not follow

a pay rise announcement.

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Table 3
Treatment effects on giving behavior.
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)
Prob Amount Prob Amount Prob Amount Prob Amount
RiseGap −0.004 −0.001
(0.072) (0.009)
RiseNoGap 0.112 0.008
(0.065) (0.008)
Anticipation −0.101 −0.018
(0.064) (0.007)
Gap & Anticipation −0.199 −0.026
(0.072) (0.008)

Control variables:
Demographics Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Preferences Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Control group HighWage HighWage RiseGapa RiseGapa RiseGapa RiseGapa RiseNoGap RiseNoGap
Control mean of dep var 0.71 0.10 0.71 0.10 0.71 0.10 0.80 0.10
Treatment effect (%) −0.6 −1.0 15.8 8.0 −14.2 −18.0 −24.9 −26.0
Number of subjects 148 148 212 211 222 222 138 137
Hypothesis tests (p-values):
Ho: Treatment effect ≤ 0 0.522 0.557 0.044 0.156 – – – –
Ho: Treatment effect = 0 – – – – 0.113 0.012 0.006 0.001

Notes: Columns 1, 3, 5, and 7 show estimates of treatment effects on the likelihood of making a donation using a Probit model. Columns 2, 4, 6, and 8 show
estimates of treatment effects on the expected value of donations, conditional on donations being positive, using a Tobit model. Robust standard errors are
shown in parentheses. In columns 4 and 8, one subject from the RiseNoGap treatment group who donated their entire wage was excluded to avoid bias.
a
Combined with the HighWage treatment group to boost statistical power.

4.2. Anticipation of the donation request

Columns 5 and 6 show the effect of informing workers about the donation request a week in advance, soon after the pay rise
announcement. That is, I compared the Anticipation group with the RiseGap group. On the basis of Proposition 3, this intervention
should have increased donations by reducing the psychological disutility of giving. Conversely, Proposition 4 predicts a decline in
donations driven by a reduction in self-deception costs.
The results indicated that anticipation of the donation request resulted in a substantial reduction in giving, most significantly in
relation to the intensive margin. The likelihood of making a donation dropped 10.1 percentage points (𝑝 = 0.113, two-tailed 𝑧-test),
which is a 14.2% reduction, and the average positive donation dropped 1.8 percentage points (𝑝 = 0.012, two-tailed 𝑧-test), which
is an 18% reduction.24 Overall, the average donation, including non-givers, dropped 2.6 percentage points (𝑝 = 0.011, two-tailed
𝑧-test), which is a 37.1% reduction.25 This finding complements the result of Exley and Petrie (2018), who found that individuals
participating in an online voting contest were less likely to click through to a donation page when given a few seconds to think
about the forthcoming request.

4.3. Joint effect of the pay rise–donation request time gap and anticipation of the request

Columns 7 and 8 show the comparison of subjects in the Anticipation group, who anticipated a donation request 1 week after
the pay rise announcement, with subjects in the RiseNoGap group, who received an unexpected donation request soon after the pay
rise announcement. The combination of a pay rise–donation request time gap and anticipation of the request significantly reduced
donations on both the extensive margin (𝑝 = 0.006, two-tailed 𝑧-test) and the intensive margin (𝑝 = 0.001, two-tailed 𝑧-test). Overall,
80% of subjects in the RiseNoGap group made a donation and gave, on average, 10% of their final wage. Conversely, only 60% of
subjects in the Anticipation group made a donation and gave, on average, 7.4% of their final wage. Thus, the pay rise–donation
request time gap and anticipation of the request jointly reduced the likelihood of giving by 25% and the average positive donation
by 26%. Overall, the average donation, including non-givers, dropped 3.6 percentage points (𝑝 = 0.001, two-tailed 𝑧-test), which is
a 43.8% reduction.

5. The potential role of mood in giving behavior

This study found that workers who were asked for a donation after a pay rise announcement were most likely to donate when
the request was delivered immediately following the pay rise announcement. As previously discussed, research on the effects of

24 If the observations from the RiseGap group were not combined with those from the HighWage group, the point estimate for the extensive margin would

be –0.108 (s.e. 0.074; 𝑝 = 0.147) and that for the intensive margin would be –0.017 (s.e. 0.008; 𝑝 = 0.028).
25 If the observations from the RiseGap group were not combined with those from the HighWage group, the estimate would be a 2.2 percentage point reduction

in the average donation (s.e. 0.89; 𝑝 = 0.015).

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S.I. Sautua Journal of Economic Psychology 90 (2022) 102518

Fig. 3. Dynamics of mood. Notes: Mood ranges from −4 (very negative) to 4 (very positive). Bars indicate 95% confidence intervals for the means. The report
of mood in session 1 is missing for one subject in the RiseGap group.

mood on decision-making suggests that the effect of a pay rise on giving might be mediated by a temporary boost in the subjects’
mood. On examining the mood hypothesis, if it were supported, we should observe that mood improved immediately following the
pay rise announcement, and then waned over the following week. This section tests the mood hypothesis by analyzing the dynamics
of elicited mood.
Fig. 3 shows the average mood of each group in each session. Mood before the pay rise announcement is represented by the
reports of subjects in the RiseNoGap group at the end of session 1 because this group was not informed of the pay rise until session 2.
The design features two measures of mood immediately following the pay rise announcement: the reports of subjects in the RiseGap
and Anticipation groups at the end of session 1, and the reports of subjects in the RiseNoGap group in session 2. The design also
provides a measure of mood at a later stage. These feelings are captured by the reports of the RiseGap and Anticipation groups in
session 2, a week after the announcement of the pay rise.
Consistent with the mood hypothesis, Fig. 3 shows that the average mood considerably improved immediately after the pay rise
announcement, and then deteriorated. As a benchmark, the figure also includes the average mood of subjects in the HighWage group,
who were initially offered a higher wage. The reports from this group were not significantly different from those from the RiseGap
and Anticipation groups (𝑝 = 0.536 for session 1 and 𝑝 = 0.852 for session 2, two-tailed 𝑡-tests pooling the latter two treatments).
This similarity suggests that mood was enhanced by the offer of a higher wage rather than by the pay rise announcement per se.
To further analyze the dynamics of mood, controlling for individual differences in demographics and self-reported preferences,
I estimated the following regression model using least squares:
( )
𝑀𝑜𝑜𝑑𝑖𝑠 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1 𝑅𝑖𝑠𝑒𝑁𝑜𝐺𝑎𝑝𝑖 + 𝛽2 𝑆2 + 𝛽3 𝑅𝑖𝑠𝑒𝑁𝑜𝐺𝑎𝑝𝑖 × 𝑆2 + 𝑋𝑖′ 𝛽4 + 𝜖𝑖𝑠 . (2)

The dependent variable, Mood𝑖𝑠 , represents the mood reported by subject 𝑖 in session 𝑠, where 𝑠 ∈ {1, 2}. The dummy variable
RiseNoGap𝑖 equals 1 if subject 𝑖 was randomly assigned to the RiseNoGap group and 0 otherwise. The indicator S2 equals 1 if 𝑠 = 2
and 0 if 𝑠 = 1. 𝑋𝑖 is a vector that includes subject 𝑖’s demographics and self-reported preferences. Standard errors were clustered at
the individual level. Note that the HighWage, RiseGap, and Anticipation groups combined constitute the reference category. Pooling
the observations from these three groups is justified by the lack of systematic differences in mood between subjects who received a
pay rise in session 1 and those who initially received a higher wage.
The results presented in Table 4 confirm the significance of the patterns shown in Fig. 3. First, the estimate of 𝛽1 is negative and
statistically significant (𝑝 = 0.001, two-tailed 𝑧-test), indicating that the promise of a higher wage, either at the recruitment stage
or in session 1, significantly improved the subjects’ mood, at least temporarily.26 Second, the negative and statistically significant

26 This finding is consistent with evidence from a short debriefing questionnaire administered by DellaVigna et al. (2019) following their productivity field

experiment. Before the last two batches of work, some subjects received a pay rise from the charity for which they were about to work, whereas others did not
receive a rise. At the conclusion of the experiment, the researchers asked the subjects whether the pay made them feel happy or unhappy. Seventy to 80% of
subjects who received a pay rise reported being happy, compared with 20% in the control group.

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Table 4
Regression analysis of mood patterns.
Mood
RiseNoGap −0.774***
(0.237)
S2 −0.394**
(0.133)
RiseNoGap × S2 1.597***
(0.271)
Constant −1.766
(1.199)

Control variables:
Demographics Yes
Preferences Yes
Number of subjects 286
Number of observations 571

Notes: Least-squares estimates using equation (2) are shown. The dependent variable is the mood reported
by subject 𝑖 in session 𝑠, where 𝑠 ∈ {1, 2}. Standard errors clustered by subject are shown in parentheses.
The report of mood in session 1 is missing for one subject in the RiseGap treatment group. The symbols
** and *** denote that 𝑝 < 0.01 and 𝑝 < 0.001, respectively, using a two-tailed 𝑧-test.

estimate of 𝛽2 (𝑝 = 0.003, two-tailed 𝑧-test) implies that mood had waned a week after the promise of a higher wage. Third, the
estimate of 𝛽2 + 𝛽3 was positive and statistically significant (𝑝 < 0.001, two-tailed 𝑧-test), indicating that subjects in the RiseNoGap
group were in a better mood in session 2, immediately after the pay rise announcement, than in session 1. Fourth, in session 2, the
average mood was significantly better in the RiseNoGap group than in the other groups, as indicated by the positive and statistically
significant estimate of 𝛽1 + 𝛽3 (𝑝 < 0.001, two-tailed 𝑧-test).
Overall, the patterns in elicited mood provide support for the mood hypothesis, which attributes the increase in the likelihood of
giving observed immediately after the pay rise announcement to a short-term boost in mood. However, the possibility that mental
accounting also played a role cannot be disregarded, as discussed in Section 2.2.1 and Online Appendix B.

6. Concluding remarks

This study investigated the effects of requesting a donation after a pay rise announcement. An unexpected request to workers
immediately after the pay rise announcement significantly increased the likelihood of giving, holding the final wage constant.
However, this effect disappeared when subjects were asked to donate a week after the pay rise announcement rather than
immediately following the announcement. These giving patterns indicate that the pay rise announcement failed to induce indirect
reciprocal behavior, but rather influenced giving behavior through either mood changes or mental accounting. In fact, the patterns
in elicited mood are consistent with the giving patterns. Perhaps surprisingly, informing subjects about the forthcoming donation
request a week in advance produced a substantial reduction in giving compared with an unexpected immediate request, suggesting
that subjects used the additional time to find excuses to give less.
These findings will help practitioners to develop better fundraising strategies, both in the workplace and elsewhere. In the
workplace, unexpected charitable appeals immediately after a pay rise inviting employees to donate immediately might be
particularly effective. However, an unexpected request might not always be preferable. A key question is whether alerting individuals
to a forthcoming request might affect sporadic and regular donors differently. While anticipation appears to substantially reduce
giving among occasional donors who are looking for excuses to give less, it may increase giving among committed donors by allowing
them to plan their giving. Thus, understanding how self-justifications to give less emerge, and how they might change over time or
across different environments, appears to be an important topic for future research.
Although the findings of this study have the potential to inform fundraising strategies in the workplace, more complementary
research is required. Workplace giving is likely to be affected by social influences, such as pressure from other members of the
organization (peers, workplace campaigners, supervisors, and employers), reputation, hierarchical concerns, and social norms, which
this study did not consider.27 Furthermore, this study did not consider one special feature of the choice architecture of charitable
giving in the workplace, namely, automatic contributions following an initial commitment to donate. Payroll-based giving programs
that allow employees to have their donations automatically deducted from their paycheck every month have become increasingly
common in the US, the UK, and Australia. Future research should examine how social influences and choice architecture interact
with solicitation strategies such as those presented in this study to affect giving behavior in the workplace.

27 For instance, Sanders (2017) found that a personalized email from the CEO of a large investment bank in London asking the employees to donate to

a charity increased donations compared with a non-personalized email, and that senior employees were more likely to give after learning that most of their
colleagues had not donated yet.

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S.I. Sautua Journal of Economic Psychology 90 (2022) 102518

Appendix A. Supplementary data

Supplementary material related to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2022.102518.

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