The Influence of Victim-Unitization on Charitable Giving
Charitable donations are often insensitive to the number of victims and sometimes actually decrease as victims become more numerous. Three studies show that these effects are eliminated by restoring the psychological coherence of multiple victims. Donations to multiple animals were larger for a herd or flock than for disaggregated animals. Furthermore, donations were higher when six children were said to belong to one unit than for disaggregated children. This effect reversed for children with negative traits, however, because participants’ feelings of concern increase for units with positive traits (single individuals and unitized groups) and diminish for units with negative traits.
Citation:
Katherine Burson, Robert Smith, and David Faro (2011) ,"The Influence of Victim-Unitization on Charitable Giving", in E - European Advances in Consumer Research Volume 9, eds. Alan Bradshaw, Chris Hackley, and Pauline Maclaran, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 515.
Authors
Katherine Burson, University of Michigan, USA
Robert Smith, University of Michigan, USA
David Faro, London Business School
Volume
E - European Advances in Consumer Research Volume 9 | 2011
Share Proceeding
Featured papers
See MoreFeatured
Product Retention (vs. Acquisition) Choices and Preference for Person-Related Features
Liad Weiss, University of Wisconsin - Madison, USA
Featured
L14. Christmas Decorations in September – What Happened to Halloween? The Effect of Prospective Event Markers on Time Perceptions and Attitudes Towards Promotions
Chaumanix Dutton, University of Southern California, USA
Kristin Diehl, University of Southern California, USA
Featured
The Identifiable Donor Effect
Yunqing Chen, Chinese University of Hong Kong, China
Leilei Gao, Chinese University of Hong Kong, China