How the number of options affects prosocial choice

Michal Herzenstein, Utpal M. Dholakia and Scott Sonenshein

International Journal of Research in Marketing, 2020, vol. 37, issue 2, 356-370

Abstract: Are potential contributors more likely to support a prosocial cause when presented with few contribution options or with many options? Across four studies—an analysis of archival contribution data from the crowdfunding site Kickstarter, a field experiment conducted in cooperation with a grocery store and a snack bar company, and two controlled laboratory experiments—we consistently find that when a fundraiser offers more options to potential contributors, the likelihood of contribution initially decreases and then increases. The result is a U-shaped relationship between the number of contribution options and contribution likelihood. We do not find such an effect for non-prosocial choices. With a fifth study, we offer a preliminary and tentative theoretical explanation for the U-shaped relationship, suggesting that the type of information processing by the decision maker (intuitive rather than deliberate) underlies this effect.

Keywords: Prosocial decision making; Choice overload; Cognitive processing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167811619300710
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:ijrema:v:37:y:2020:i:2:p:356-370

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijresmar.2019.10.005

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Research in Marketing is currently edited by Roland Rust

More articles in International Journal of Research in Marketing from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().