Elizabeth A. Keenan

Avoiding overhead aversion in charity

How to increase charitable donations Charities could raise more money from more people if they were to announce that a startup grant had been used to defray overhead expenses. Gneezy et al. told 40,000 potential donors that an initial donation (half of the target amount) would be used as seed money, as a source of matching funds, or for covering administrative and fundraising costs. When the money was assigned to cover administration, twice as many people made donations. Science, this issue p. 632 Both seed money and matching approaches increase charity donation rates and amounts. Donors tend to avoid charities that dedicate a high percentage of expenses to administrative and fundraising costs, limiting the ability of nonprofits to be effective. We propose a solution to this problem: Use donations from major philanthropists to cover overhead expenses and offer potential donors an overhead-free donation opportunity. A laboratory experiment testing this solution confirms that donations decrease when overhead increases, but only when donors pay for overhead themselves. In a field experiment with 40,000 potential donors, we compared the overhead-free solution with other common uses of initial donations. Consistent with prior research, informing donors that seed money has already been raised increases donations, as does a

The Effect of Background Music in Shark Documentaries on Viewers' Perceptions of Sharks.

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Driving Pro-Environmental Choice

1 matching campaign. Our main result, however, clearly shows that informing potential donors that overhead costs are covered by an initial donation significantly increases the donation rate by 80% (or 94%) and total donations by 75% (or 89%) compared with the seed (or matching) approach.

Pseudo-set framing.

Despite the ongoing need for shark conservation and management, prevailing negative sentiments marginalize these animals and legitimize permissive exploitation. These negative attitudes arise from an instinctive, yet exaggerated fear, which is validated and reinforced by disproportionate and sensationalistic news coverage of shark ‘attacks’ and by highlighting shark-on-human violence in popular movies and documentaries. In this study, we investigate another subtler, yet powerful factor that contributes to this fear: the ominous background music that often accompanies shark footage in documentaries. Using three experiments, we show that participants rated sharks more negatively and less positively after viewing a 60-second video clip of swimming sharks set to ominous background music, compared to participants who watched the same video clip set to uplifting background music, or silence. This finding was not an artifact of soundtrack alone because attitudes toward sharks did not differ among participants assigned to audio-only control treatments. This is the first study to demonstrate empirically that the connotative attributes of background music accompanying shark footage affect viewers’ attitudes toward sharks. Given that nature documentaries are often regarded as objective and authoritative sources of information, it is critical that documentary filmmakers and viewers are aware of how the soundtrack can affect the interpretation of the educational content.

How warm days increase belief in global warming

Despite ongoing efforts to encourage sustainable behavior and consumers’ claims that they are eco-minded, green attitudes remain insufficiently reflected in consumers’ choices. In order to better understand and help explain what drives consumers’ choice of green products we consider three major theoretical accounts drawn from literature highlighting positive and negative spillover effects in green choice: a) a moral account involving the desire for a moral token or activation of moral standards, b) an identity account involving the motive for consistent green behavior and identity, and c) an accessibility account whereby sustainability is top of mind. Using a combination of hypothetical and consequential choice experiments, we tested the relative role of these drivers in governing peoples’ choices of pro-environmental options over equivalent non-green alternatives, as each dictates vastly different marketing strategies. We find green product choice is largely and consistently explained by the real-time accessibility of eco-friendly concepts. Moral and identity drivers also play a role but to lesser and varying degrees. We discuss the implications of our findings for increasing consumers’ choice of green products.

Commitment and Behavior Change: Evidence from the Field

Pseudo-set framing—arbitrarily grouping items or tasks together as part of an apparent “set”—motivates people to reach perceived completion points. Pseudo-set framing changes gambling choices (Study 1), effort (Studies 2 and 3), giving behavior (Field Data and Study 4), and purchase decisions (Study 5). These effects persist in the absence of any reward, when a cost must be incurred, and after participants are explicitly informed of the arbitrariness of the set. Drawing on Gestalt psychology, we develop a conceptual account that predicts what will—and will not—act as a pseudo-set, and defines the psychological process through which these pseudo-sets affect behavior: over and above typical reference points, pseudo-set framing alters perceptions of (in)completeness, making intermediate progress seem less complete. In turn, these feelings of incompleteness motivate people to persist until the pseudo-set has been fulfilled.