Let Me Think About It: Evidence of Choice Deprivation, Not Overload, in Charitable Giving

Atiyeh Yeganloo, Cahal Moran and Juvaria Jafri

Cambridge Working Papers in Economics from Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge

Abstract: We present comprehensive experimental evidence that expanding the number of charitable options enhances both donation outcomes and donor experience, suggesting choice deprivation rather than choice overload. In a pre-registered online experiment with over 2,248 participants donating real money to UK charities (average donation of £1.59 out of £2.50), we find that increasing the number of available charities raises total donations robustly by approximately £0.04. Furthermore, allowing participants to donate to multiple charities, rather than restricting them to one, boosts donations by £0.23 on average, without increasing regret or diminishing satisfaction. Other mediators, difficulty, deliberation, and familiarity, do not explain the impact of treatments on giving behaviour. Our design rules out alternative explanations, including self-interest, ease of donation, or perceived importance of giving, and highlights that more choices encourage thoughtful engagement with the donation decision. The results are highly relevant to the design of consumer-facing interventions in pro-environmental domains, importantly for energy and climate policy. In areas such as carbon offsetting and climate-focused giving, individuals are required to make voluntary contributions or adopt sustainable products. Our evidence suggests that providing diverse and flexible choices can increase contributions in these domains.

Keywords: Charitable Giving; Donation; Public Goods; Choice Overload; Choice Deprivation; Satisfaction; Regret (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D64 D91 H00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-07-15
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-dcm and nep-exp
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/sites/default/files/pub ... pe-pdfs/cwpe2554.pdf

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cam:camdae:2554

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Cambridge Working Papers in Economics from Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jake Dyer ().