There are two mental giving decisions, will I give? (yes/no) and conditional on a yes, how much? Nobody makes the first decision because they’ve got an affinity for blankets over solar lamps.   We give to reinforce who we are and it’s easier to see me in another person or story then an inanimate object.

But those inanimate objects are useful for making giving feel tangible, which matters to the my competence – i.e. feeling like my $20 wasn’t wasted, it was a good decision.  Feeling good about my giving is also fueled by my sense of autonomy, feeling the choice of if and how much is mine.   The literal execution of choiceful is, well, offering choices.

But might some choices create mental conflict and avoidance vs. empowering me? This is what we tested and the visual is below.  Note, this testing isn’t to find a winning A/B test, it’s to expand our collective knowledge base.  It’s the equivalent of basic research vs. applied and the latter is forever dependent on the former.

The in-market test was “What gift do you want to give?” vs. “Who do you want to give the gift to?”.   Picking one over the other is choiceful but might it also create mental conflict best resolved by not choosing – i.e. not giving?

Our research,  “From Warm Glow to Cold Chill: Choice Avoidance in Charitable Donations”  was done in partnership with Catholic Relief Services(CRS), a long-time DonorVoice client committed to expanding horizons and behavioral science testing, and UCLA’s Anderson School of Management.

What’d we find?  The “who” condition significantly underperformed and related, online studies told us why – choosing between “who’s” is unpleasant and guilt inducing.   How to apply this?

• Review those gift catalogs.  How often are the what choices unintentionally conveying a who choice?   I’d wager it’s the norm.  There’s a reason that ‘most urgent need’ tends to garner a plurality of gifts.
• How often does an appeal include a list of programs or services to show the breadth and depth of your work in the name of “educating” the reader or wanting as many hooks as possible to catch as many reader eyes as possible?   Bad for a variety of reasons but it might also be implicitly asking people to choose between “who’s”
• As an aside, we separately researched and tested a “what” shopping list that used the same item vs. different items arbitrarily attached to different amounts.  The same “what” was multiplied commensurate with the ask string – e.g., $20 for 10 blankets, $40 for 20 blankets   vs.  $20 for 10 blankets and $40 for 5 solar lamps.    The same ‘what’ beats the smorgasbord of ‘what’ items because not all choices are helpful.

Kevin

P.S. Yes, that’s a Best Paper award from 160 submissions from behavioral scientists aiming to improve our knowledge base.  Nice job team and a special shout out to Kiki, DonorVoice’s Chief Behavioral Scientist.