The effect of “socially moral” purchases on future financial donations

Abstract

Many for‐profit companies are adopting third sector missions, and conversely, nonprofit agencies are developing profit‐generating business ventures. Consequently, there are an increasing number of market‐based transactions connected to social good activity. We wondered what the impact of prosocial market‐based transactions were on future in charitable giving. On the one hand, moral reinforcement argues that purchasing products with a social good would increase future charitable giving. On the other hand, moral licensing suggests that once people feel or provide evidence that they are a morally good person, their future actions are more selfish, immoral, and/or unethical. Thus, it is possible that purchasing a product with a social good would decrease future charitable giving. Following a protocol for psychological research, we conducted a series of 3 experiments to test the effect of socially moral purchases. We found evidence for moral reinforcement and no evidence for moral licensing. For men in Study 1 and all participants in Studies 2 and 3, participants were likely to donate more after imagining or remembering socially moral purchases. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.