Anonymity, nonverbal communication and prosociality in digitized interactions: An experiment on charitable giving

Adam Zylbersztejn, Zakaria Babutsidze, Nobuyuki Hanaki and Marie-Sophie Roul
Additional contact information
Adam Zylbersztejn: Univ Lyon 2, Université Lumière Lyon 2, GATE UMR 5824, 69130 Ecully, France; research fellow at Vistula University Warsaw (AFiBV), Warsaw, Poland
Marie-Sophie Roul: CGEMP, LEDa UMR 8007-260, University Paris Dauphine, PSL Research University, Place du Maréchal de Lattre de Tassigny, 75016 Paris, France

No 2402, Working Papers from Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon St-Étienne (GATE Lyon St-Étienne), Université de Lyon

Abstract: We empirically examine the value of modern digital communication tools for inducing prosocial behavior. In our online experiment (N = 594), charity members transmit a standardized message to potential donors through alternative digital communication channels varying the amount of nonverbal content (written message in the baseline TEXT condition vs. voice recording in AUDIO vs. video-recorded discourse in VIDEO). We find partial support for the initial conjecture that individuals are more cooperative towards strangers the less anonymous the latter become to the former. Compared to the baseline TEXT condition, our AUDIO treatment induces a nearly 40% increase in the average donation. However, the transmission of nonverbal cues may backfire: the effect observed in the richest VIDEO condition has only half the magnitude of the one in AUDIO. We attribute this phenomenon to the “avoiding the ask” behavior previously documented in the charity giving literature. We also rule out the possibility that these treatment effects stem from perceptual mechanisms by which these changes in prosociality are driven by the differences in the perception of charity members in the stimuli, suggesting that the treatment effects capture the intrinsic value of reducing anonymity for promoting prosociality in the digital world.

Keywords: Digital communication; nonverbal content; charitable giving; online; economic experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D64 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.gate.cnrs.fr/RePEc/2024/2402.pdf (application/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:gat:wpaper:2402

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon St-Étienne (GATE Lyon St-Étienne), Université de Lyon Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Nelly Wirth ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).