Charitable Donation Behaviour: The Influence of
Effort and Mind-set on the Perceived Impact and
Future Donation Intention
By Gerbrich Koopal
S2129736
Charitable Donation Behaviour: The Influence of
Effort and Mind-set on the Perceived Impact and
Future Donation Intention
Gerbrich Koopal S2129736 18-06-2018 Master Thesis MSc Marketing Management University of Groningen Faculty of Economics and Business
Department of Marketing PO Box 800, 9700 AV Groningen
Supervisors
First supervisor: Dr. J. Wan j.wan@rug.nl
ABSTRACT
This study focused on effortful pro-social behaviour in the charitable context. Studies on the effort heuristic explain that effortful actions are believed to result in higher valued outcomes compared to exerting no effort. Pro-social behaviour literature argued that effortful charitable giving could lead to donating a higher amount of money and that perceived impact is an important driver of donating. With a 2 (pro-social behavior: effortless vs. effortful) x 2 (mind-set: affect vs. deliberative) set-up we investigated whether an effortful pro-social action resulted in a higher perceived impact when the donor evaluated their donation based on feelings compared to deliberately scrutinizing it. This expected increase in perceived impact is proposed to mediate the predicted relationship between effort and future donation intention. No evidence for these predictions were found. However, we provided insight about the connection between pro-social effort and donation impact from which we derived interesting recommendations for future research.
Keywords: Pro-social behaviour, effort heuristic, judgment, evaluation, mind-set, perceived impact, donation intentions
PREFACE
This thesis represents the end of the Master Marketing Management at the University of Groningen. The focus of this paper lies on effortful pro-social behaviour in the charitable domain. This study gave an opportunity to gain a greater understanding of a specific psychological aspect of consumer donation behaviour. Even though many things remain unclear, several insights are shared which hopefully are acted upon as input for future conceptual research ideas by Master students.
I would like to express my gratitude towards Dr. J. Wan, my first supervisor, for her encouraging feedback, thoughtful criticism and continuous support throughout the process. Additionally, I would like to thank Dr. J.W. Bolderdijk, my second supervisor, for his efforts regarding the thesis evaluation process.
TABLE OF CONTENT ABSTRACT PREFACE 1 2 1. INTRODUCTION 4 2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 6 Heuristics 6
The Effort Heuristic 7
Ambiguity 8 Misattribution 8 Impact 11 3. METHODOLOGY 16 Participants 16 Procedure 16 Effort Manipulation 17 Mind-set Manipulation 18 Dependent Measures 19 Data Analysis 19 4. RESULTS 20 Manipulation Check 20
Evaluation of Perceived Impact 20
Evaluation of Future Donation Intention 21
Additional Statistics 21
Discussion 23
5. GENERAL DISCUSSION 23
Theoretical Contribution & Managerial Implications 26
Limitations & Future Research 27
Conclusion 29
REFERENCES 30
1. INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, a great number of public charities, foundations and other non-profit organizations are trying to better the world. All these organizations are fighting for a good cause and, accordingly, for the attention of consumers. Understanding the intentions behind pro-social behaviour is key if charities want to increase the number of donations or the amount of loyal donors (Ling, 2012). When the motivations behind pro-social behaviour towards good causes is understood, a more effective and fitting marketing strategy can be developed and implemented (Kashif, Sarifuddin & Hassan, 2009). According to Dolnicar and Lazarevski (2009), understanding pro-social behaviour is important since the marketing managers of charities often lack the insight in customer perspectives. This shortfall in knowledge results in weak strategies to sustain competitive advantage and grow the amount of donors. However, understanding consumer behaviour is complicated and depends on many factors such as feelings, attitudes, biases and heuristics (Szmigin & Piacentini, 2014).
however, in the study of Yeung and Soman (2007) this led to erroneous evaluations of the service of a lock smith. The service was evaluated better when the locksmith took a longer time to open a lock, when logically the locksmith’s work is better when he takes less time to execute the job. Therefore, it is important to understand why and in which situations a higher perceived effort could lead to positive outcomes in the charitable domain.
How can marketing managers from charities implement the effort heuristic in their donation procedure to make donators feel positive about the effort and impact they make? And, given the possible positive and negative effects of effort, under which conditions should they apply this strategy? These are the main questions we try to answer with the present research. Given that exerting effort is generally associated with a higher valued outcome (Kruger et al., 2004) and the impact of pro-social contributions is often too ambiguous to evaluate (Das, Kerkhof & Kuiper, 2008), the first proposition entails that donors may use their feelings towards the donation as a heuristic for impact. Do consumers assume wrongly that a performed pro-social action will have more impact when the donation procedure was effortful versus effortless? If so, under which conditions can charities enhance the tendency to rely on the effort heuristic to increase the perceived impact?
The second proposition entails that the above may depend on the donors’ mind-sets. One can determine the value of an outcome through two processes. Individuals can use affect-based valuation, or alternatively, valuation in a deliberative manner which are categorized under respectively system 1 and system 2 processing (Evans, 2003; Hsee & Rottenstreich, 2004). Heuristics are mental short cuts that belong to the system 1 feeling-based processing mode. Research has shown that these systems differ in activity and can be initiated or overruled (Wilson, Lindsey & Schooler, 2000). Therefore, we propose that when donors find themselves in an affect-based mind-set, they are more likely to rely on the effort heuristic and thus experience an increased perception of impact. When deliberative thinking is salient, we expect heuristic processing to be blocked, which may result in a decreased perceived impact.
Our third proposition is to investigate if the increased perception of impact resulting from an effortful procedure mediates the intention to donate in the future. If this is the case, there are many possibilities for charities to shape their donation procedure in such a way that they can maximize the benefits.
mind-set linked to the effort heuristic, which, to our best knowledge, has not been researched yet. The outcomes of this study could provide important directions for future research on how these psychological processes can be translated to managerial relevant concrete advice since the results can be incorporated into the donation procedure strategy. This way, charities could increase the satisfaction of the donors about their exerted effort and the impact they make. This may result in multiple benefits for the organization, such as better brand image, loyalty to the cause and spreading positive word of mouth. The result of this is a win-win situation; the consumer will feel morally content, and the organization could receive more donations.
First, we will discuss prior research in a literature review leading up to the theoretical conceptual model of this study. Second, the methodology section of the study will be described. Subsequently, the results of our research are presented, concluding with a discussion, ideas for future research and managerial implications.
2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Heuristics
remember a similar event that occurred in the past. The examples you come up with in your mind are a cue for the likelihood of that event happening (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973).
For this study, we are going to investigate if effort works as a heuristic for impact when making donations. It is not uncommon that one thinks that putting more effort into an action should result in a greater outcome. It is a known phenomenon that an evaluative judgment of a target can be influenced by effort. One solution to explain this phenomenon is the cognitive dissonance theory. Several studies have demonstrated that when an individual dedicates more effort to an action, the results of that action are evaluated more positively. This effort can be expressed in dedicating physical effort, money, time and even pain (Aronson & Mills, 1959; Gerrard & Mathewson, 1966). Aronson and Mills (1959) provided evidence for this theory in an experiment. Dissonance arises when individuals want to be part of a sorority but have to suffer in the hazing to become a member. These two concepts, wanting to belong to the sorority and the feeling of suffering, do not go together psychologically. This causes an uneasy feeling which can be solved by changing one’s evaluation about one of the concepts to make them congruent. Emphasizing how valuable it is to be a member of that specific sorority might justify the uncomfortable effort put in to join the group (Festinger, 1962). Therefore, to reduce cognitive dissonance, the individual will put a higher value and meaning on being a member of the sorority. The suffer-leading-to-liking concept is derived from this.
The Effort Heuristic
However, Kruger et al. (2004) found that there is an alternative way in which effort can influence judgement. Their study proposed that consumers could also use effort as a heuristic. Heuristics follow a different psychological mechanism than the theory of cognitive dissonance. Whereas in the latter a higher valuation is put on the end result to justify effort and reduce cognitive dissonance, the former serves as an informative rule of thumb in an evaluation, implying that if something costs a lot of effort to achieve, it must be of high value. Kruger et al. (2004) specifically found that effort is used as a heuristic for quality. In their experiments, they manipulated the amount of effort put into a painting. Results show that in the high-effort condition, the painting was rated higher on quality compared to the low-effort condition. Additionally, the individuals in the high-effort condition recorded a higher monetary value for the painting compared to the low-effort condition.
to make a judgement about a target (e.g. “I put a lot of effort in this donation, therefore it must have a substantial impact”). In heuristic processing, effort informs judgement, which results in an inference about the value of the outcome of that specific behaviour. With cognitive dissonance, on the contrary, exerting effort to reach a goal is justified by assigning more value to the outcome to reduce dissonance. Our proposition is a bit different than Kruger et al. (2004), since they proposed that effort is a heuristic used to judge the work of other people. We propose that effort can be used as a heuristic for one’s own actions as well when it gives one information about how they need to value the outcome of their effortful behaviour. For instance, a student who studied 10 hours for a test might belief he deserves a higher grade than a student who only studied 2 hours, because he put in more effort.
Ambiguity
Kruger et al. (2004) report another important finding. They found no significant difference between an unexperienced and an experienced art evaluator’s perception of quality. This indicates that even self-proclaimed experts’ judgements of quality are influenced by the effort heuristic. It is interesting that effort is such a strong informative cue to base one’s evaluation process of quality on, especially when an art expert should know how to evaluate art based on multiple elements. Kruger et al. (2004) argue that individuals mainly rely on effort as a heuristic when they find it hard to use other information, characteristics or stimuli as a sign of quality. For example, this could be the case when the target object’s evaluative elements or cues are ambiguous, hard to interpret or when participants lack knowledge on how to evaluate art. Kruger et al. (2004) supported this proposition with their study. Perceived effort – and thus perceived quality – were evaluated higher when participants were shown an armour in low resolution than in high resolution. This was due to the lower resolution making the evaluation process more ambiguous. Thus, when it is not clear to us on what rational reasons to base our judgements on, we tend to look for another source of information as input for our judgement. One’s feelings could then be a logical alternative. Slovic, Finucane, Peters and MacGregor (2007) support this idea. They argue that besides evaluating and analysing an object, we tend to rely on emotions and feelings as well, since it is an easier cue to count on in a complex decision-making situation. This results in an efficient and quicker judgement process.
Misattribution
study of Kruger et al. (2004), the participants tended to rely on the feeling of effort. They might be unconsciously thinking something along the lines of; “I do not know how to evaluate this painting, but it took 18 hours to make, so the painting must be of good quality.” People are not sure how to evaluate the painting, and subsequently misattribute their feelings about effort towards to quality of the painting. This theory is supported by Payne, Cheng, Govorun and Steward (2005), who describe the process of misattribution in their paper. We will explain their theory on the basis of an example in the artistic domain of music. According to Payne et al. (2005) the following takes place. When individuals are asked to listen to a music fragment and are subsequently asked to evaluate the quality of it, the evaluation situation is very ambiguous. Do they know how to evaluate music and when is a composition considered of good quality? The cues to base the evaluation on are ambiguous and/or personal to each individual. When they were first presented with a prime or cue, in this case, information on how many hours the composer spent on writing the piece of music, it gave them an idea about effort that was put into the composition of this music. This elicits a positive or negative evaluative cue. If they listen to the musical piece again, the individuals who know the composer spent many of hours of work on this piece will attribute their positive (or negative) feeling about the amount of effort spent to quality and may think something along the line of; “If the composer spent so many hours on it, the quality must be good.” This manner of transferring feelings towards the judgement target elicited by presenting concrete information first (e.g. effort) is seen in other research as well (e.g. Gawronski & Ye, 2014; Murphy & Zajonc, 1993).
situations (Kardes, Posavac & Conley, 2004). Which naïve theory is provided to the participant is used as an inference about what the concept of effort means to them in relation with talent and quality. Which of these heuristics – more effort leads to quality or more effort means less talent and thus lower quality – an individual uses, depends on what inference is made salient to the participant. This is exactly what Cho and Schwarz (2008) researched. They found when individuals were primed with the inference that good art takes time, the paintings in the high-effort condition were valued higher compared to the low-high-effort condition. In contrast, when individuals were primed with the naïve theory that good art is the result of talent, the painting in the low-effort condition was rated of higher value (although non-significantly). Apparently, the order in which the primes are displayed also affects the outcome. When the talent prime precedes the effort prime, the effect of the effort heuristic disappears. Whereas Kruger et al. (2004) assume that the naïve assumption that greater effort leads to a better painting is always accessible, Cho and Schwarz (2008) argue that naïve theories are flexible inferences which can be replaced by one another on the spot.
consumers were asked to rate the efficiency of the service before the price, they found the service fee more reasonable for a short duration compared to a service of long duration (Yeung & Soman, 2007). Again, in alignment with the research of Cho and Schwarz (2008), judgement changes when different beliefs are made salient before evaluation. The heuristic is composed on the moment of evaluation. A longer duration either means that the service is better or that the service is less efficiently performed. Which heuristic is formed depends on the inference one holds about duration.
Impact
Our domain of interest is the charitable domain, which is associated with pro-social donation behaviour. Before linking effortful actions to charitable giving, we need to understand what drives donating in the first place. According to Duncan (2004), pro-social behaviour is substantially influenced by the perceived impact the charitable behaviour will have. Several studies have examined different ways to make donors perceive the donation impact as higher, which ultimately resulted in more donations. For instance, when people know that their donation will be matched by a third party, they tend to be more responsive to a donation request and contribute more money. This happens due to the matching mechanism, which increases the perception of impact of each individual donation (Karlan & List, 2007). Equivalently, when charitable solicitations are more specific, people tend to donate more because they sense that their contribution will have more impact. Cryder, Loewenstein and Scheines (2013) show the same supporting evidence. They argue that people donate more money to charities that used the identifiable victim effect. When a donator reads more details about where his or her donation goes to, it gives the donor the perception that his action is more impactful resulting in a higher willingness to donate. The same impact effect occurs with regard to distance. The experiment of Touré-Tillery and Fishbach (2017) revealed that people think that donating to a charity that helps people nearby is more impactful than helping others further away. Therefore, people took more action to support the charity that helps people nearby than further away. Based on the abovementioned studies one can assume that the perceived impact of the donation is susceptible for many influences. In this study, we propose that the perceived impact expectation will not only originate from charitable appeals such as matching the donation or distance to target recipients as discussed above, but also from the level of effort of the donation procedure.
do not know how much impact their donation will have in the goal attainment of the charity even when they actually value the cause.Smith and Berger (1996) found that donors find it difficult to understand where their money goes to and have a hard time trusting the organization to make use out of their donation. The information people use to base their idea about perceived impact on is not always clear. We propose that people might use the level of effort of the donation procedure as information for impact judgement. Olivola and Shafir (2013) provide evidence that the willingness to engage in pro-social behaviour for a charity increases when the action of engagement is effortful, or even painful, compared to an effortless, enjoyable gesture. This is known as the martyrdom effect. They argue that this is the result of contributing more meaning to the donation itself when they have suffered for it during the donation process. However, attributing meaning to the donation only occurs when exerting effort believed to be necessary to support a cause (Thompson & Bunderson, 2003). Several studies find similar results. When the act of giving is related to feelings of effort and pain, the commitment to pro-social giving enhances (Bastian, Jetten & Ferris, 2014; Higgins & Lauzon, 2003; Koo & Fischbach, 2016). Koo and Fischbach (2016) propose that this is because giving makes donors feel that they are generous and committed to the organization’s goal.
perception of impact is relative to the person, their action and what charity it is for. When donators know the objective impact of their donation (e.g. donating 1 dollar will result in 3 vaccines for children), they will probably not rely on the effort heuristic anymore. Hypothesis 1 is derived from the above study proposition (See Figure 1).
H1: Given the effort heuristic, an effortful (effortless) action of pro-social behaviour will result in a higher (lower) perceived impact of that behaviour.
Above we discussed that donors may rely on their feelings about the donation procedure when it is not clear to them what impact they will make with their donation. We propose that in those situations, their feelings about the level of effort of the charitable action may act as input information about how donors perceive the impact they possibly make. This is the result of relying on the effort heuristic, believing that exerting more effort will result in a greater outcome. Relying on heuristics requires system 1 thinking, which works automatically, intuitively and involves feelings in the decision-making process. When people deliberately scrutinize information, they process the information consciously and analytically. Therefore, it is less likely that feelings are involved in the decision-making process, minimizing the chance one will rely on heuristic processing (Evans, 2003). This implies that the impact of the donation could be perceived differently by the donor depending on whether they participate in system 1 or system 2 thinking, or, in other words, affect-based thinking or deliberative thinking. Possibly, nudging people to process information in a deliberative and analytical manner may cancel the dependency on feelings and thus heuristics as well.
The study of Hsee and Rottenstreich (2004) report this concept of making one of the processing modes salient by priming the participants accordingly. The participants were first confronted with a series of calculation questions to elicit the analytical mode, or they were asked what they were feeling reading certain words, eliciting the affective valuation. The study describes that the feeling mode depends more on the nature, presence and absence of a certain stimulus, whilst the calculative mode depends more on the scope of the stimulus.
manner. This is in agreement with Schwarz and Clore, (1983) and Slovic et al. (2007), who state that people often do not calculate the perceived benefits as result of their donation, but rather make the choice based on feelings and intuition. Small et al. (2007) showed that the valuation processes can be primed to donors resulting in different donation outcomes. As soon as they primed the calculative valuation process, most donors did not make decisions based on their feelings anymore. Multiple other studies have shown that it is possible to overrule, turn off or suppress the intuitive, affective valuation process when they prime or induce people to evaluate deliberately (Wilson & Brekke, 1994; Wilson et al., 2000).
The goal of this study is to initiate the same effect related to the heuristic processing of effort. We will not look at the donation amount but will research if donors will change their perception of impact based on which mode is primed. We argue that intuitively, donors donate when they perceive the impact of their donation to be substantial, which they might assume based on the effort heuristic which fits with the affect-based processing mode. Therefore, we propose that when the deliberative mode of thinking is primed, donors will not perceive a higher impact based on their exerted effort because they will not rely on their feelings towards effort anymore to make an inference about impact. Hypothesis 2 is derived from this line of thinking (see Figure 1).
H2: Given the effort heuristic, an effortful (effortless) action of pro-social behaviour will result in a higher (lower) perceived impact of that behaviour, only when the consumer is in the affect (deliberative) mind-set.
FIGURE 1
It is important for non-profit organizations to establish valuable relationships with their donors to increase the chance that they contribute again when a future request is presented. Therefore, it is essential to understand the downstream effects of an effortful donation procedure. From the previous literature discussed above, we can derive that an effortful donation procedure may increase the willingness to contribute as well as strengthening the commitment to the cause (Olivola & Shafir 2013). Other studies have found similar results concerning the increased commitment to the charity when the pro-social behaviour is effortful (Bastian, Jetten & Ferris, 2014; Higgins & Lauzon, 2003). Logically, a higher commitment may lead to a higher probability of donating in the future. Koo and Fischbach (2016) have found this effect. Besides complimenting the research above that effortful self-giving increases commitment, they found that the intention to give in the future increases. However, they have researched this when the effortful donation involves self-giving. We propose that the increased perceived impact, resulting from an effortful donation procedure, will increase the chance that the donor will contribute to the cause again in the future. We expect to see this effect only when the donor finds oneself in the affect mind-set. Hypothesis 3 is derived from this idea (see Figure 2).
H3: A higher (lower) perceived impact resulting from effortful (effortless) behaviour will increase (decrease) the future donation intention, but only for the affect (deliberative) mind-set.
FIGURE 2
3. METHODOLOGY Participants
The aim of this paper was to obtain a sample size of approximately 50 participants per experimental condition. 228 students from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands have been recruited for this study. They either participated for money or for course credit. The data set was cleaned by taking out responses who did not pass the free recall question about the fictional charity name African School Project Foundation (ASPF). The minimum requirement to pass is that at least the word Africa was mentioned. The final sample after cleaning the data set consisted of a total of 198 valid responses. 120 participants were female (60.6%) and 78 participants were male (39.4%) (Mage = 22.06 years, SD = 2.83).
Procedure
The study design consisted of a 2 (pro-social behavior: effortless vs. effortful) x 2 (mind-set: affect vs. deliberative) between subject design (see Table 1). The online study was performed in the laboratory combined with several other unrelated studies, which together took approximately 1 hour. The study ran for 9 days. Upon arrival, the participants had to sign an informed consent form before they were asked to sit in a private cubicle where the instructions were explained in a neutral tone of voice. We asked the participants to evaluate an online donation procedure of the non-profit organization ASPF. The organization’s name and logo are both fictional to prevent existing brand knowledge (Hagtvedt, 2001). Both the level of effort of the donation procedure and the mind-set of the participants were manipulated. The students were randomly allocated to an experimental condition. Lastly, the dependent measures and demographic information were collected. After completing the study, participants were asked to sign the “sign-off” list to make sure that they were awarded with either money or course credits. TABLE 1 Experimental Setup Experimental Conditions Mind-set (affect) Mind-set (deliberative)
Pro-social behaviour (effortless) A B
Effort Manipulation
The effort manipulation consisted of an effortless and effortful condition. A pre-test was conducted to test the assumption of which scenarios were considered effortless and effortful. Four online donation scenarios were tested, ranging from exerting barely any effort (condition 1) to exerting a lot of effort (condition 4) to complete the donation. The level of effort depends on the amount of steps the participant needed to go through in order to complete the online donation transaction. After reading the donation procedure, participants were instructed to answer nine questions regarding speed, simplicity, satisfaction, efficiency as well as privacy concern to research if the latter is impaired in any of the conditions (see Appendix A). Privacy concerns can negatively influence the perceived impact and intention to donate in the future. If this is the case, the results of the variables are not solely the consequence of the effort manipulation but privacy as well, which is what we were trying to prevent. All responses are recorded on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree.
Initially, 101 responses were recorded for the pre-test. After cleaning the data set by deleting incomplete responses, 79 valid responses remained (condition 1: n = 21, condition 2:
n = 21, condition 3: n = 20, condition 4: n = 17). Demographic information was collected from
The effort-score and the concern-score were compared across the four conditions with a one-way between subjects ANOVA test. For the concern-score, there was no significant difference in privacy concern across the four conditions (F(3, 75) = 1.38; p = 0.26). This means that privacy was not impaired in any of the conditions. The same test was done for the effort-score. A significant difference was found across the four conditions (F(3, 75) = 20.41; p = 0.00) (see Appendix B, Table 3A). The Tukey HSD test was chosen as the post hoc comparison test to show which of the conditions were statistically different from each other in effort (see
Appendix B, Table 3B) The results show that the mean effort score from condition 1 (M = 5.78; SD =0.63) was significantly different from condition 3 (M = 3.58; SD = 1.28) and 4 (M = 3.35; SD = 1.51), both at p = 0.00 level. Condition 1 and 2 (M = 5.03; SD =1.05) did not significantly
differ. However, condition 2 also significantly differed from condition 3 and 4, at the p = 0.01 and p = 0.00 level respectively. Because a successful perceived effort manipulation was necessary for the study, condition 1 and condition 4 were selected to use in the main study, since they had the greatest difference in the level of effort.
Condition 1 required the participant to go through three steps, namely clicking the “donate” button on the homepage, selecting the donation amount and transferring the money in a quick manner only needing a pin. Condition 4 required the participants to exert more effort, completing seven steps in total, similar to condition 1, but also requesting participants to make an account on the website first and using an e.dentifier to complete the transaction in several steps. Please refer to Appendix C for the detailed donation procedures including images representing each step in the conditions.
Mind-set Manipulation
After the participants went through the donation procedure, they read a text which instructed them to think about their donation before they will answer the questions. This text was written in such a way that it either elicited a deliberative mind-set or an affect-based mind-set. For instance, in the affect-based manipulation the texts instructed the participant to “take a moment to consider how you feel about your charitable contribution” and to “rely on your intuition” before answering the questions about perceived impact and intention to contribute in the future. For the deliberative manipulation, the text instructed people to “take a moment to think about your charitable contribution” and to “consider your carefully reasoned thoughts.”
“impression”. Words such as “rational”, “thinking” and “reasoning” were used to initiate the deliberative mind-set (Van den Berg, Manstead, Van der Pligt & Wigboldus, 2006; Van Gelder, De Vries & Van der Pligt, 2009). These words were integrated in the manipulation text. Additionally, the manipulation strategy from Mikels, Maglio, Reed and Kaplowitz (2011) was included. They used specific instructions for the participants such as “rely on your gut feelings to guide your decision” for the affect-based mind-set and “use your considered, rational analysis to guide your decisions” for the deliberative mind-set (Mikels et al., 2011: 750). The complete manipulation texts of this study can be found in Appendix D.
Dependent Measures
The participants from all four conditions were asked the same set of questions. They were asked to evaluate the perceived impact of their donation and indicate their intention to contribute again, both on a 7-point Likert type scale. For the detailed questions, please see Appendix E. The effort manipulation was already pre-tested. However, to be sure that effort is again successfully manipulated, a manipulation check was added by asking two questions regarding the usability of the donation website namely, “I found the ASPF donation website effortful to use” and “I found the ASPF donation website easy to use”. Besides, the likability of the website was evaluated with one question, namely “I like the ASPF donation website”. All items were recorded on a 7-point Likert scale. An additional open question was added, asking the participants to explain what the abbreviation ASPF stands for. This question was used as an attention check to gauge if participants carefully read the study instructions in which also the full name African School Project Foundation was stated.
Data Analysis
The dataset was cleaned according to the requirements explained above in the section named
Participants, followed by the descriptive statistics of the sample. The complete dataset
consisted of 198 responses allocated over the four conditions (condition A: n = 52, condition B: n = 49, condition C: n = 45 condition D: n = 52). The analysis of internal reliability for the dependent measures showed a sufficient value for the intention to donate in the future (α = 0.83) as well as the perceived impact (α = 0.86).
participants in the affect mind-set condition. For hypothesis 3, the PROCESS macro for SPSS is used to run a moderated mediation (model 8). We expected to find an increased intention to donate in the future for participants in the effortful condition with an affect based mind-set. Bootstrapping was set to 5000. This means that 5000 individual samples were drawn from the sample population, after which each individual sample was replaced before the drawing of the next one. This showed how the variation in the original sample is distributed (Hesterberg, Monaghan, Moore, Clopson & Epstein, 2003).
4. RESULTS Manipulation Check
The manipulation check consisted of two questions described in the methodology section above, regarding how effortful or how easy it is perceived to use the website. The former is reverse coded to be able to perform a Pearson Correlation Test to assess if the items are correlated. There was a marginally significant correlation found (r = 0.13, n = 198, p = 0,08), but combining both variables to one score results in an insufficient Alpha score of 0.21. Therefore, each item is separately tested with a one-way between subjects ANOVA to asses if the effort manipulation functioned. Regarding the perceived effort using the website, the non-reverse coded variable is used for further analyses.
The participants in the effortful condition evaluate the charity website marginally significant more effortful to use compared to the effortless condition (M = 4.39; SD = 1.70 vs.
M = 3.94; SD = 1.63; F(1, 196) = 3.59; p = 0.06). Complimentary, participants in the effortless
condition significantly found the website easier to use opposed to the effortful experimental group (M = 5.84; SD = 0.88 vs. M = 4.92; SD = 1.43; F(1, 196) = 30.13; p = 0.00; see Appendix
F). Hence, the level of effort across both conditions was successfully manipulated.
Evaluation of Perceived Impact
We predicted with hypothesis 1 that participants going through an effortful donation procedure could perceive their donation to have a bigger impact compared to the effortless condition due to heuristic processing. The concept of perceived impact was captured with three items (see
effort and mind-set on perceived impact. Opposed to the prediction, the analysis resulted in a non-significant interaction effect of effort and mind-set on perceived impact (F(1, 194) = 0.09;
p = 0.76), which means that no moderation took place. The main effect of the effort
manipulation on perceived impact was not significant (F(1, 194) = 5,44; p = 0.26), which is also inconsistent with the previously stated prediction. Hence, hypothesis 1 and hypothesis 2 were both rejected (see Appendix G). To explore if there is in general a difference between all four scenarios regarding perceived impact, an additional one-way ANOVA is performed. There is no significant difference between the four groups (F(3, 194) = 1.80; p = 0.15), therefore a post hoc test did not need to be performed.
Evaluation of the Future Donation Intention
Hypotheses 3 included the downstream effect of perceived impact. This study predicted that donors that perceive the impact of their donation to be substantially high due to heuristic thinking in the effortful condition, would be more likely to donate again in the future. The moderated-mediation model 8 of the PROCESS macro for SPSS was run to analyze the prediction (see Appendix H). Bootstrapping was set to 5000. In line with the previous analysis, no moderation took place because the interaction effect is not significant (t(194) = -0.31, p = 0.76). Besides, mediation did not occur since the main effect of effort on future donation intention was not significant (t(193) = -0.64, p = 0.52), nor was the main effect of effort on the perceived impact (t(194) = -0.29, p = 0.78) which are assumptions that need to be met for mediation. Hence, hypotheses 3 was rejected. However, a significant main effect of perceived impact on the future donation intention was found (t(193) = 6.59, p = 0.00). This main effect is positive (b = 0.37), which signified that an increase in the perceived impact will result in a higher intention to donate in the future.
Additional Statistics
hypothesis 1 and 2 were re-tested using moderation model 1 in PROCESS (bootstrapping set to 5000) taking the perceived effort item from the manipulation check as independent variable (see Appendix I). This item is more subjective and represents how the participants experienced the use of the website to donate. In alignment with the previous results, no moderation by mind-set takes place since the interaction effect was not significant (t(194) = -0.65, p = 0.52), nor was the main effect of mind-set on perceived impact (t(194) = 1.47, p = 0.14). Nonetheless, a significant positive main effect was found of the perceived effort on the perceived impact (t(194) = 3.11, b = 0.26, p = 0.00). This indicated that an increase in the perceived effort results in a higher perceived impact, which is in agreement with hypothesis 1. It is possible that the perceived effort of the participants is a better predictor of perceived impact because it records how the individual experienced the amount of work subjectively, regardless of the effort condition they were in.
The additional variables recorded in this study were the demographic factors age and gender, which can be added as covariates to the analysis. However, since the study sample consists of only students, it is arguable if age is required to control for. Gender could be an interesting covariate to include because some stereotypes exist about the differences in thinking processes between men and women. It is believed that men naturally think in a logical manner and woman more intuitively (Gilligan, 1982). Since other factors for which we do not control for, such as need for cognition, also cause individual differences, we decide not to include gender as covariate (Epstein, Pacini, Denes-Raj & Heier, 1996).
Lastly, a general item was added to the questionnaire regarding the likeability of the website since that factor could possibly influence the responses. For instance, whether participants are in the effortless or effortful condition, if they do not like the website itself it could negatively affect their future donation intention. Therefore, the complete conceptual model was re-tested in model 8 of PROCESS with the likability item added as covariate (see
Appendix J). The analysis shows a positive significant main effect of the likability on the
impact on the intention to donate in the future stays significant when controlling for the covariate (t(192) = 6.05, b = 0.30, p = 0.00).
Discussion
This experiment researched whether donors going through a lot of effort to complete their donation would wrongfully perceive the impact they make substantially bigger compared to donors who exerted close to no effort. Analysis of the data showed that this is not the case. No significant influence was found of the effort manipulation on perceived impact. Subsequently, we tested whether the mind-set (affect vs. deliberative) moderates the described relationship of hypotheses 1. This study argued that participants within the effortful condition relying on their feelings would record a higher mark for their perceived impact compared to the participants deliberately scrutinizing their donation. However, no mind-set moderation effect has been found. No difference has been found between the four conditions concerning the perceived impact.
No mediation effect through perceived impact on future donation intention is detected. However, the perceived impact had a significant positive effect on the intention to donate in the future. This means that when donors feel that their donation has made a change, they are more likely to redo the favour when a next donation request presents itself.
Lastly, adding the likability of the website as covariate to the overall model resulted in positive significant main effects on perceived impact and intention to donate in the future. This is not ideal since this means the variance in the abovementioned variables are not only the result of the effort manipulation. When controlling for the covariate, the significant relationship between perceived impact and intention to donate in the future stayed significant.
5. GENERAL DISCUSSION
pro-social behaviour on the perceived impact of that donation. In other words, the participants in the effortful condition did not report a significantly higher perceived impact compared to the effortless condition. Additionally, no moderation effect of the mind-set has been found, nor did the study find a significant difference in perceived impact between any of the four experimental conditions. Derived from the prediction above, the second proposition entails the idea that participants recording a higher perceived impact could also be more willing to donate again in the future. Studies from Koo and Fischbach (2016) as well as Olivola and Shafir (2013) have found evidence that effortful giving leads to a greater meaning and commitment to the cause resulting in an increased intention to donate again. However, contrary to the prediction, this present study has not found evidence that the perceived impact acts as a mediator between the effort manipulation of pro-social behaviour on the intention to donate in the future. However, perceived impact does have a direct positive effect on future donation intention.
inefficiently as well”. It is possible that participants in this study misattribute the negative feeling about effort towards the perceived impact. In this case, the inefficiency inference could be the result of perceiving the effort as unnecessary. Olivola and Shafir (2013) argue that participants only value effortful donation behaviour when it is necessary to help the cause. Whereas performing effort for a 5 kilometer charity run could be seen as appropriate for the event, going through a cumbersome donation procedure might be perceived unnecessary and thus inefficient. This may especially hold true if donors have past experiences with easier procedures as reference. Besides, donors anticipate the effort they have to perform for the run. They want to perform the physical effort as means to an end. Online donors probably do not anticipate to perform effort and only want to transfer the money to donate. Thus, extra effort, especially compared to past online donation experiences, might seem unnecessary and thus an inference about inefficiency may rise.
Theoretical Contribution & Managerial Implications
We did not find evidence for the predictions of this study. However, a positive significant effect for hypothesis 1 was found when we inserted the perceived experienced effort variable instead of the intended manipulation of pro-social behaviour. This means that exerting more effort leads to a higher perceived donation impact. This connection has, to the best of our knowledge, not been researched before. The significant result using perceived effort is probably because the perceived effort was self-reported and an actual representation of how the amount of effort was experienced by the participant. Experienced effort is subjective and also depends on past experience with donation procedures. Therefore, this variable probably worked better than our effort manipulation, which just objectively divided the participants over an effortless and effortful group compared to each other. No evidence was found for the role of mind-set in this context. The managerial implication of this is that even though it might be easier to obtain more donations with a simple procedure, donors could possibly in certain circumstances rely on their feeling of effort to get an idea about the impact they are making, which in turn is a major driver of pro-social behaviour in the first place (Karlan & List, 2007). More research has to be done to uncover the underlying mechanism and concrete conditions in which this phenomenon could work.
It is difficult to describe certain concrete theoretical contributions due to insignificant results. Nonetheless, we can share some insights which are also related to ideas for future research later on in the discussion. An important insight is that the effort heuristic is possibly not only based on the naïve theory that effort leads to value, which Kruger et al. (2004) assume. In the case of the donation procedure, it is possible that participants have negative inferences about effort resulting in an “inefficient effort” heuristic which could explain the insignificant result regarding perceived impact. To our knowledge, not much has been studied about this theory. On a managerial level, this means that the personal inferences about effort also play a role in the decision making process of donors when they are scrutinizing if they should donate or not. Again, future studies should shed more light on specific practical implications which organizations could integrate in their donation procedure to obtain and retain more donors.
means on a managerial level that charitable organizations could implement tactics which create for (prospective) donors the sense that their donation will make a substantial impact.
Limitations & Future Research
Several limitations were faced during this study. Firstly, this laboratory study was part of a series of other unrelated researches that were completed by the participant in one sitting. Since the sitting did not start with our study, it is plausible that the concentration level was not optimal anymore once that participant reached our part. This could explain why 13.2% of the participants did not pass the attention check. Also, we suspect that previous studies can influence the mind-set manipulation, which could harm our study. If these studies demand cognitive effort, it is possible that the cognitive resources of the participants were partly depleted when they perform our study, and thus more likely evaluate the donation based on feelings, deteriorating the deliberative mind-set manipulation (Pohl, Erdfelder, Hilbig, Liebke & Stahlberg, 2013). Or, if the previous studies are more along the line of deliberative thinking, it could be that our affect-based mind-set nudge is not strong enough. Hence, to be sure that the participant’s mind-set was solely the result of the manipulation, we propose that it is better to perform the study separately. This way, we have more control over the experiment, which would allow for a cleaner set of results and a better chance in investigating the role of mind-set. We suggest for future research to pre-test the mind-set manipulation as well as including a manipulation check in the study itself, which this study lacked.
manipulation. It would be interesting to create two working fictional websites with distinct donation procedures regarding the level of effort. The participants could actually browse through the website to make the donation. When they experienced the actual transaction instead of only reading the procedure as in our study, we recommend for future research to measure the perceived effort as independent variable with several items. For a follow up study, it is recommended to consider the following as well. Willingness or intention to donate in the future does not necessarily capture actual behaviour, but an intention. Even though Smith and McSweeney (2007), state that donation intention is a good predictor of actual behaviour, it will never truly reflect donation behaviour involving real money.
During the study, we added the covariate likability of the website to control for. It turns out that the website likability is an important influence on the perceived impact as well as intention to donate in the future. This indicates that this is a critical factor that needs to be measured in future research to control for. It is also important to mention that liking the website does not necessarily indicate that the cause is liked and valued as well. Not everyone values a cause aiming to help children with school supplies equally. And Olivola and Shafir (2013) argue that it is important that the effort is performed for a valued cause in order for it to be meaningful. Given that we used a non-existing foundation to control for existing feelings towards the cause, it could be that participants did not value the fictional cause which could influence the results regarding effort. Therefore, adding this as a covariate, or even experimenting with different causes could be beneficial for further research.
before efficiency. Regardless, it would be interesting if studies could test when exerting effort is a good or bad thing in this context.
Lastly, the effort heuristic has been proven to work when a participant judges the actions of another person (Kruger et al., 2004). We argued in the theoretical framework section that effort could be used as input information regarding a self-evaluation about the outcome of one’s own labour as well. “I went through a lot of effort, therefore, I must make a big impact with my donation”. However, it might be possible that heuristic processing and cognitive dissonance are not mutually exclusive, but entangled when a person is asked about their perceived impact. “I went through a lot of effort, so to justify I did not do that for nothing, I put more value on the impact I make with my donation”. If cognitive resonance reduction took place, it could partly explain why the mind-set manipulation did not influence the perceived impact since this manipulation was designed to influence heuristic processing. In prospective research, these psychological mechanisms could be researched in the context of effort to uncover the underlying routes to pro-social behaviour.
Conclusion
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APPENDICES
APPENDIX A: Pre-test Questionnaire & Factor Analysis
All questions are selected and modified from the Handbook of Marketing Scales from Bearden and Netemeyer (1999). The items are scored on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = strongly
disagree to 7 = strongly agree. The Factor Analysis results in two dimensions named Effort
and Concern. The Principal Component Analysis functions is the extraction method and the Varimax with Kaiser Normalization is used as rotation method in this study.
TABLE 2
Pre-test Survey Items & Factor Analysis Rotated Component Matrix
Component Alpha
Subject Dimension Items 1 2
Speed Effort 1. The website enables me to complete the transaction quickly. .913 -.012
.933
Simplicity Effort 2. This website is simple to use. .821 -.134
Simplicity Effort 3. It is quick and easy to complete a transaction at this website. .918 -.131
Consumer Sat. Effort 4. I am very satisfied with the donation procedure. .670 .494
Consumer Sat. Effort 5. This donation procedure matches my ideal way of donating online. .722 .463 Efficiency Effort 6. The donation procedure on the website is an efficient way of donating. .914 .109
Efficiency Effort 7. It did not cost me effort to donate the money to ASPF. .881 .009
Privacy Concern 8. I feel like my privacy is protected at this website. .010 .881 .810
Privacy Concern 9. I feel safe in my transactions with this website. -.105 .896
APPENDIX B: Analysis Pre-test
TABLE 3A
One-way Anovas of Effort & Concern Score
* The value of the mean difference is significant.
TABLE 3B
Effort Score Post Hoc Test
Scenario Mean Std. Deviation
Condition 1 5,78 0,63
Condition 2 5,03 1,05
Condition 3 3,58 1,28
Condition 4 3,35 1,51
* The value of the mean difference is significant.
One-Way Between Subject ANOVA Sum of
Squares
df Mean Square F-Test Sig. Privacy Score Between Groups
Within Groups 9,073 164,034 3 75 3,024 2,187 1,383 0,255
Effort Score Between Groups Within Groups 79,716 97,667 3 75 26,572 1,302 20,405 0,000*
APPENDIX C: Experimental Conditions
Effortless Condition
Step 1: When you open the website of the African School Project Foundation, you land on their homepage. Imagine that you click the “Donate” button in the upper right corner.
Step 3: You are redirected to the online banking platform to pay. You would fill in your pin code to complete the transfer of the donation. Donation completed!
Effortful Condition
Step 1: When you open the website of the African School Project Foundation, you land on their homepage. Imagine that you click the “Donate” button in the upper right corner.
Step 3: Now you have to log into your email to activate your ASPF account. You would receive an email from ASPF. You open the email and read it. Then, you click the link to activate your new account.
Step 5: On this page you would type “10” for your donation amount and click “OK”.
APPENDIX D: Mind-set Manipulation Text
The paragraphs below function as the mind-set manipulation in the study.
Affect-based Mind-set
You just experienced the donation procedure through which you made your donation to ASPF. Now, take a moment to consider how you feel about your charitable contribution. How helpful do you feel your contribution was to ASPF? Consider your impressions and feelings. It is important to rely on your intuition and gut feelings to guide your judgment.
Deliberative Mind-set
APPENDIX E: Dependent Measures Future Donation Intention
Answers recorded on a 7-point Likert-type scale, given 1 = “strongly disagree” and 7 = “strongly agree”. Statements are adjusted from Sia, Lim, Leung, Lee, Huang and Benbasat (2009).
Perceived Impact
Answers recorded on a 7-point scale, given 1 = “small impact” and 7 = “big impact” and 1 = “not at all” and 7 = “very much”. Statements are adjusted Touré-Tillery and Fishbach (2007).
TABLE 5
Dependent Measures Items
Study Questionnaire Survey Items
Future Donation Intention
I would consider donating in the future to ASPF.
It is likely that I would donate to ASPF in the future on their website. I think ASPF seems like a trustworthy organization.
Perceived Impact How much impact would you expect to make with your donation to ASPF? To what extend would you expect your donation to help ASPF?
APPENDIX F: Manipulation Check Statistics
TABLE 6
Anovas of Perceived Effort & Perceived Ease of Website
Effortless Condition Effortful Condition
Mean Std. Deviation Mean Std. Deviation Perceived Effort 3,94 1,63 4,39 1,70 Perceived Ease 5,84 0,88 4,92 1,43
* The value of the mean difference is significant.
One-Way Between Subject ANOVA Sum of
Squares
APPENDIX G: Statistic Analysis for Hypotheses 1 & 2
TABLE 7
Univariate Analysis of Variance
* The value of the mean difference is significant.
Two-Way Between Subjects ANOVA Type III
Sum of Squares
df Mean Square F-Test Sig.
