Increasing Effectiveness of Charitable Mail Solicitations Using Negative Emotions

With ever increasing needs for donations, charities are seeking ways to enhance the effectiveness of their solicitations. Relying on a broad theoretical framework derived from literatures on appraisal theories of emotion, helping, and persuasion, this paper explores how two negative emotions, guilt and empathy, can enhance the persuasiveness of charitable solicitations. We find that for mail solicitations, empathy and guilt led to an egoistic motive to help. The ease of escape from helping and involvement with the charity moderated the effect of these emotions on helping. Managerial implications of these findings are discussed.

Citation:

Vivek Patil, Surendra Singh, and Sanjay Mishra (2009) ,"Increasing Effectiveness of Charitable Mail Solicitations Using Negative Emotions", in AP - Asia-Pacific Advances in Consumer Research Volume 8, eds. Sridhar Samu, Rajiv Vaidyanathan, and Dipankar Chakravarti, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 350-351.