Charity Gift Effect on Donations
Psychology 110
November 18, 2013
No More Thank You’s for Grandma Most children spend some time in their lives with a stack of thank you cards, some freshly opened crayons, and a top-notch juice box on the side. The fronts of many grandparents’ fridges can attest to that. It follows that charitable companies should offer a few thank you gifts to increase donations right? Wrong. According to a recent study by George Newman and Jeremy Shen, thank you gifts actually decrease charitable donations. Six separate experiments were utilized within this study to explain the counterintuitive phenomenon. Their findings offer support for the motivational crowding theory, in which extrinsic motivators such as gifts undermine intrinsic motivation. Shen and Newman initially tested peoples’ beliefs regarding potential results of the study, by polling them as to whether someone would be more or less likely to donate to charity when they would receive a gift for donating. Over 65% of participants believed that donations would both increase and occur more frequently with gifts involved. The next five experiments worked to test this hypothesis and identify its cause. Experiment number two tested the donating habits of people offered nothing in return comparative to people offered a pen. The median donation of the non-gift group exceeded the gift group by 25%. This experiment proves the demotivating effect of a thank you gift, but leaves open multiple reasons for such an effect. Perhaps the gift was viewed as insignificant and resulted in a poor perception of the company. Maybe they believed the pen was cheap and the anchoring effect resulted in them lowering their proposed donation amount. Lastly, the thank you gift could be crowding out the person’s intrinsic motivation. Shen and Newman ruled out the first two theories with their subsequent experiments. Experiment four involved the use of a more desirable gift, namely a box of chocolates. Although participants
November 18, 2013
No More Thank You’s for Grandma Most children spend some time in their lives with a stack of thank you cards, some freshly opened crayons, and a top-notch juice box on the side. The fronts of many grandparents’ fridges can attest to that. It follows that charitable companies should offer a few thank you gifts to increase donations right? Wrong. According to a recent study by George Newman and Jeremy Shen, thank you gifts actually decrease charitable donations. Six separate experiments were utilized within this study to explain the counterintuitive phenomenon. Their findings offer support for the motivational crowding theory, in which extrinsic motivators such as gifts undermine intrinsic motivation. Shen and Newman initially tested peoples’ beliefs regarding potential results of the study, by polling them as to whether someone would be more or less likely to donate to charity when they would receive a gift for donating. Over 65% of participants believed that donations would both increase and occur more frequently with gifts involved. The next five experiments worked to test this hypothesis and identify its cause. Experiment number two tested the donating habits of people offered nothing in return comparative to people offered a pen. The median donation of the non-gift group exceeded the gift group by 25%. This experiment proves the demotivating effect of a thank you gift, but leaves open multiple reasons for such an effect. Perhaps the gift was viewed as insignificant and resulted in a poor perception of the company. Maybe they believed the pen was cheap and the anchoring effect resulted in them lowering their proposed donation amount. Lastly, the thank you gift could be crowding out the person’s intrinsic motivation. Shen and Newman ruled out the first two theories with their subsequent experiments. Experiment four involved the use of a more desirable gift, namely a box of chocolates. Although participants