Jen Shang

Identity congruency effects on donations

This article describes several field and laboratory experiments that investigate an identity congruency effect on donations. Experiment 1 is a field experiment showing that consumers give more money to a public radio station if they are told that a previous donor who shares their identity also made a large contribution. This effect is more likely to occur when consumers have high collective-identity esteem (measured in Experiment 2a) and when attention is focused on others (manipulated in Experiment 2b). The authors measure these two moderators simultaneously and observe and replicate a three-way interaction. Again, the identity congruency effect is the strongest when consumers have high collective-identity esteem and when attention is focused on others (Experiment 3a and Experiment 3b). These results provide a novel understanding of the causes of the identity congruency effect on donations. The authors conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and substantive implications of these findings.

The Impact of Social Comparisons on Nonprofit Fund Raising

This paper examines the impact of social comparisons on fundraising and charitable contributions. We present results from a field experiment involving contribution to a public radio station. Some callers are told of the contributions decisions of others, and other callers are given no such information. We find that providing ambitions (high) social comparison information can significantly increase contributions.

LIMITS OF THE EFFECT OF SOCIAL INFORMATION ON THE VOLUNTARY PROVISION OF PUBLIC GOODS: EVIDENCE FROM FIELD EXPERIMENTS

Previous work has demonstrated the effect of social information in the voluntary provision of public goods in the field. In this article, we demonstrate the boundary conditions of the effect. We show that when social information is too extreme, it ceases to influence individual contributions. The results highlight a natural limitation of the social information effect, and provide a characterization of the most effective levels for an organization to use.

The Social Marketing of Giving

Abstract Despite significant government efforts to bolster individual philanthropy, giving by individuals (as a percentage of household income) has remained remarkably static and participation in many western countries is declining. This article explores the role that governments might play in facilitating growth, from a social marketing perspective. Drawing on research from multiple domains this article proposes an easily accessible and actionable framework (1) to inform public policy and (2) to guide further impactful academic research, with the objective of increasing both participation in, and the monetary value of, individual giving.

Social Norms and Fundraising: The Trade-Off Between Enhanced Donations and Donor Identity Esteem

ABSTRACT The academic literature in fundraising has focused primarily on understanding the drivers for giving. For example, past research shows that the proper use of social information (i.e., perception about the amount of another individual’s giving) can increase the amount of a focal donor’s contribution by more than 10% without additional fundraising cost. It does so because people use another person’s giving to estimate how much on average others give and they then conform to that social norm. This paper examines the degree to which one’s perception of a social norm associates not with how much they give but with how good they feel. More specifically, we show that there is a trade-off between how high a perceived social norm is and how good donors feel about themselves. In particular, perceiving others giving at a relatively high level is associated negatively with donors’ identity membership esteem. The implications for self-based theory development and the enhancement of fundraising practice are explored.