It’s me again… Ask avoidance and the dynamics of charitable giving

Maximilian Späth

Oxford Economic Papers, 2023, vol. 75, issue 4, 962-972

Abstract: Charities typically ask potential donors repeatedly for a donation. These repeated requests might trigger avoidance behaviour. Considering that, this article analyses the impact of offering the option to opt-out of receiving future fundraising asks on charitable giving. In a proposed utility framework, any opt-out option decreases the social pressure to donate. At the same time, an unconditional opt-out option induces feelings of gratitude toward the fundraiser, which may lead to a reciprocal increase in donations. The results of a lab experiment designed to disentangle the two channels show no negative impact of the option to avoid repeated asking for donations. Instead, the full model indicates a positive impact of the reciprocity channel. This finding suggests that it might be beneficial for charities to introduce an unconditional opt-out option during high-frequency fundraising campaigns.

JEL-codes: C73 C91 D64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/oep/gpad020 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:oup:oxecpp:v:75:y:2023:i:4:p:962-972.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Oxford Economic Papers is currently edited by James Forder and Francis J. Teal

More articles in Oxford Economic Papers from Oxford University Press Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().