Abstract
Donation campaigns that have an unsuccessful start often trigger negative social information in the social and mass media (e.g., “few others have donated so far”). Little research exists to shed light on the effects of such information in the context of donations. Across three studies involving different causes and different channels of communication, we find harmful effects of negative social information on the willingness to donate among prevention-focused consumers but tendencies of positive effects for consumers with a promotion focus. We identify response efficacy as a mediator of the harmful effect for prevention-focused consumers. This finding suggests that social proof theory is not sufficient to explain the harmful effect of negative social information. Alternative mediators are tested and rejected. The findings imply that an effective strategy to avoid harmful effects of negative social information is to trigger a promotion focus in target group members and communicate facts about charity effectiveness.
Highlights
The competition for private donations is fierce, and the efforts of charities to mobilize stakeholders often fail (e.g., Bielefeld 2014)
Using the Johnson-Neyman floodlight technique, our analysis shows that the negative effect of social information is significant only when the regulatory focus scores are greater than or equal to .64 (BJN = −.86, SE = .43), meaning that dominantly prevention-focused respondents are less willing to support the charity when exposed to negative social information (Mfew ≤ 3.39, Mmany ≥ 4.25, p < .05)
We found that negative social information reduced willingness to donate among prevention-focused consumers
Summary
The competition for private donations is fierce, and the efforts of charities to mobilize stakeholders often fail (e.g., Bielefeld 2014). Extended author information available on the last page of the article. Marketing Letters (2021) 32:111–122 failures typically contain negative social information, such as “few have donated so far” or “the response has been slow.”. The Intelligencer reported in October 2018: “The local United Way campaign is only a month old, but already it’s lagging behind that of last year, when the charity failed to meet its fundraising goal for the second consecutive year” (Hendry 2018). Both reports reveal negative information about the behavior of other people: few others have donated
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