Featuring a Benefactor or a Victim? How Charity Appeals with Different Protagonist Focus Affect Donation Behavior: An Abstract

Abstract

Charities often feature needy victims in their appeals (e.g., an emaciated, hunger-stricken child featured in UNICEF’s ads) and much of the research in donation literature also focuses on investigating how to portray victims in a way that will elicit more donations. The present work proposes an alternative charity appeal that features a benefactor (e.g., a person who volunteers at the charity). In practice, some charities have already been featuring benefactors in their appeals (using a ‘benefactor appeal’). For example, the United Way in early 2017 launched a docu-series named “The Hero Effect,” in which each episode features an ordinary person having a life-changing impact on an individual or a community. Yet, little is known about whether the benefactor appeal is more effective than the victim appeal in eliciting charitable donations, and, if so, when and why. Results from five studies involving both behavioral intention and real donation measures suggest that featuring a benefactor can elicit more donations than featuring a victim, and that this effect is driven by moral elevation. Moreover, this effect is moderated by charity recipients’ group membership (e.g., American vs. African). Further, not all benefactor appeals are effective. Featuring an out-group benefactor (an African volunteer), though it elicits similar levels of moral elevation as featuring an in-group benefactor (an American volunteer), leads to lower donations. We find that this is because the benefactor’s group membership influences the extent to which the evoked feeling drives donors’ decision process, such that an in-group (vs. out-group) benefactor appeal facilitates donors’ feeling-based (vs. reasoning-based) decision process, resulting in higher donations. Taken together, we develop a theoretical framework on when and why a benefactor appeal elicits more donations. Five studies involving both behavioral intention and real donation measures test and confirm the theoretical model. We contribute to research on charitable donation, moral elevation and demonstrate to charities that a benefactor appeal can be effective in promoting donations.