THE PSYCHOLOGY OF

DONATING TO CHARITY

Dr. Marijke C. Leliveld

December 10, 2018
 Who am I?

 PhD (2009) from Leiden University

“Ethics in economic-decision-making”
 2008- current: Assistant Professor, Marketing RUG

 Research interests
 Ethics and Morality

 Cause-related Marketing

 Charity donations

 Sustainable packaging

 Prosocial compensations after service failures

 Etc. etc.
What will I discuss today?

 Donating: What’s in it for me?

 Donating: Sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t

 Donating: The perspective of the charity

What’s in it for me

Nothing
*

*According to pure altruism

What’s in it for me: warm glow
What’s in it for me: warm glow
 Andreoni (1989, 1990): the positive emotional
feeling people get from helping others

 Mandatory vs. voluntary donations in the brain

(Harbaugh et al, Science, 2007)
What’s in it for me?
 Prosocial spending and well-being
(Aknin, et al., 2013)
What’s in it for me?
Results:

 Positive relationship between prosocial spending

and Social Well-Being (SWB)
 Rates of prosocial spending higher in wealthier
countries
 But: relationship between prosocial spending and
SWB not affected by countries’ mean income
 What’s in it for me:
positive (moral) self-image

Ideal self

Jordan J., Leliveld M.C., and Tenbrunsel A.E. (2015) The Moral Self-Image Scale: Measuring and Understanding
the Malleability of the Moral Self. Front. Psychol. 6:1878. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01878
Patterns in prosocial behavior
I value
 Moral consistency volunteering

 Moral habits
Greed
 Moral dynamics
 Moral licensing (e.g., Sachdeva et al, 2009)
 Evidence from the field
 Unique dataset containing over 250,000 decisions of
over 20,000 people over the course of 10 months
 Could separate Keepers, Donators, and Switchers
 Analyze patterns of decisions by Switchers

Results
 Vast majority of people always keep money (89.3%)

 But also some evidence for licensing

Leliveld, M.C. & Risselada, H. (2017). Dynamics in Charity Donation Decisions: Insights from a Large
Longitudinal Data Set. Science Advances, 3, e1700077
What will I discuss today?

 Donating: What’s in it for me?

 Donating: Sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t

 Donating: The perspective of the charity

Sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t

 “If I look at the mass I will never act. If I look at

the one, I will”
Mother Theresa

 Paul Slovic
(Univ. of Oregon)
Sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t

Imagine you are in charge of deciding which of 2 health

programs will get support. Both aim to prevent 2 different
diseases (disease A and disease B) which are prevalant in society.
You have only budget to support one of these health programs.
Which one would you support?

Program A:
15.000 people at risk for disease A, 9.000 saved

Program B:
290.000 people at risk for disease B, 100.000 saved
Sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t

 Statistics vs. Human lives

Sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t
Statistical lives
 Food shortages in Malawi are affecting
more than 3 million children.
 In Zambia, severe rainfall deficits have
resulted in a 42% drop in maize
production from 2000. As a result, an
estimated 3 million Zambians face
hunger.
 Four million Angolans - one third of the
population - have been forced to flee
their homes.
 More than 11 million people in Ethiopia
need immediate food assistance.
Question: How much do you want to donate?
Identifiable lives
 Rokia, a 7-year-old girl from Mali,
Africa, is desperately poor and faces a
threat of severe hunger or even
starvation. Her life will be changed for
the better as a result of your financial
gift. With your support, and the
support of other caring sponsors, Save
the Children will work with Rokia's
family and other members of the
community to help feed her, provide
her with education, as well as basic
medical care and hygiene education.
Sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t

(Small & Loewenstein, 2007)

Sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t

In an ideal world…
Sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t

In the real world…

 Sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t

Question: Rate the warm glow you expect to

feel if you donated money to help this 1
person.

Can
help
Question: Rate the warm glow you expect to
feel if you donated money to help this 1 person
but cannot help the other.

Västfjäll D., Slovic, P. and Mayorga M. (2015). Pseudoinefficacy: Negative feelings from children who cannot be
helped reduce warm glow for children who can be helped. Front. Psychol. 6:616. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00616
 Sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t

Pseudoinefficacy: illusion of ineffectiveness of our helping

Västfjäll D., Slovic, P. and Mayorga M. (2015). Pseudoinefficacy: Negative feelings from children who cannot be
helped reduce warm glow for children who can be helped. Front. Psychol. 6:616. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00616
What will I discuss today?

 Donating: What’s in it for me?

 Donating: Sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t

 Donating: The perspective of the charity

The perspective of the charity
 Aim of charity: to help as much as possible

 How: attract money from donators

 Lots of critique on expenditures of charities

“You should not be paid for working for charity”

 The perspective of the charity

 What charity to donate to?

  Percentage spent on Bonus system for individual Donations raised per year

salary employees

Option A 23 No $250.000

Option B 45 Yes $600.000

Leliveld, M.C., & Bolderdijk, J.W. (in)effective altruism. Working paper

 The perspective of the charity

 What company to invest in?

  Percentage spent on Bonus system for individual Revenues per year

salary employees

Option A 23 No $250.000

Option B 45 Yes $600.000

 The perspective of the charity
 Result

Chart Title Chart Title

1 1
2 2

Pps also perceived the low effective charity as more moral and appropriate, whereas for
companies the high effective company was perceived as more moral and appropriate.
 The perspective of the charity

 Below is what would happen if you were to donate

[invest] 100 Euro

  Percentage spent on Bonus system for individual #lives saved

salary employees [#apps developed]

Option A 23 No 0.4

Option B 45 Yes 1.8

The perspective of the charity
 Result

Chart Title Chart Title

1 1
2 2
What did I discuss today?

 Donating: What’s in it for me?

 Donating: Sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t

 Donating: The perspective of the charity

Further reading materials

Thanks for your attention!

Email: M.C.Leliveld@rug.nl