Is kindness invaluable? The impact of benefit and cost on prosocial behavior intentions

Abstract

PurposeIn the modern increasingly competitive milieu of cause marketing activities, both profit and nonprofit organizations expect their advocation of prosocial programs to gain the support of target customers. Previous research shows the effect from adding participant's personal attributes or social influence factors. This study considers the effects of benefit incentives and cost/reward influences to enhance prosocial behaviors.Design/methodology/approachThree between-subject experiments were conducted and SPSS Statistics ANOVA was employed to analyze the experimental results.FindingsRewarding time delays and prosocial efforts have no significant impact on the relationship between other-benefit incentives and willingness to engage in prosocial behaviors, but do significantly impact the self-benefit incentives condition. However, the negative effect of self-benefit condition can be mitigated by high rewards.Research limitations/implicationsSince prosocial campaigns proposed by organizations in this study include both profit and nonprofit organizations, perhaps two category organization types should be attentively classified to evaluate the effects.Practical implicationsUnder social marketing campaigns with self-benefit incentives conditions, the empirical findings of this study show that profit and nonprofit organizations can provide higher reward values to mitigate the adverse effects of high participating costs.Social implicationsSocial marketing campaigns with other-benefit incentives are less affected by high participating costs and highlight the value of altruism.Originality/valueThis study provides valuable suggestions for both profit and nonprofit organizations to use self-benefit/other-benefit incentives under cost related factors influence to encourage customers' prosocial behaviors.