Why Does Wikipedia Keep Doing It Like This?
For years now, as part of the donation request, Wikipedia informs us that most don’t give and acknowledges that most will ignore this request.
As a behavioral scientist, I’m puzzled why they keep using this message and if they’ve ever tested it. Behavioral science is now very popular – maybe too popular for its own good – so it’s not like they haven’t heard of a concept called “social proof”. [And yes, they have.]
But that’s not the only element of their request I have (research) questions about. After a professional behavioural science audit of their solicitation, here are our research questions:
1. “Today we ask you to defend Wikipedia’s independence.”
Would response be greater if instead of asking people to save Wikipedia, we asked them to save what it represents; something concrete that is tied to their needs, beliefs and identity e.g. free access to knowledge?
2. “.. but 98% of our readers don’t give; they simply look the other way.” “We know that most people will ignore this message.”
Social proof theory says people do what others do, even if that’s not the desirable behavior. So in theory, announcing that most don’t help and saying “we know you’ll ignore this” should give people license to do just that! Thus, removing such a negative social proof message should increase giving. So here are our research questions:
– Does the negative social proof message perform better than a positive social proof message e.g. 200 people gave today? To our knowledge, such a test hasn’t been done yet.
– Does removing the negative social proof message improve giving? As Wikipedia reports, when they tested these messages out, donation rate dropped. (Thanks Chris for helping us answer this question by sharing their report on Friday’s post). Wikipedia can’t explain this and they’ve asked experts to explore this finding further. Below is our hypothesis.
– Could there be a mediating factor explaining the negative social proof finding?People are drawn to causes that match their beliefs and help them express who they are, their identity. Wikipedia has a small, “hard-core” supporter base with extreme beliefs around freedom of expression, open source, private property etc… This group doesn’t necessarily identify with the vast majority, hence the negative social proof message reinforces their “extremist” identity. By removing that message, Wikipedia loses that group’s support. Or looking at it from the other side, the negative social proof message might “work” and suppress response from the vast majority but embolden the tiny fraction that do give. The message works differently for different people based on their identity and who the “other” versus “self” group is.
3. “If everyone who reads Wikipedia gave just a little, we could keep Wikipedia thriving…”
This statement was meant to make people feel it’s easy to keep Wikipedia alive. However, it sets an impossible target: everyone, 100% of people who read Wikipedia, has to give for it to survive. Even if just one person doesn’t give, all other donations go to waste. Now, how attractive does that sound? What would happen if they set a more achievable target that still makes it clear that your participation is needed, for example: “if 75% of our readers give just a little, then..”?
4. “The price of a cup of coffee is all we ask.”
Linking charitable gifts to the price of a consumer good is considered to provide a useful reference point and the realization that not much is asked of you. However, that link makes it clear that some sacrifice is needed and the trade-off becomes tangible. By definition, giving to charity means you’re sacrificing something, but what would you be more likely to sacrifice: something that gives you pleasure (hedonic good e.g. coffee), or something that is useful (utilitarian good e.g. laundry detergent)? Evidence suggests the latter is more likely to work. Instead, Wikipedia asks us to sacrifice a hedonic good, our coffee. Would the use of a utilitarian good be more effective than this hedonic good? Or maybe just the mention of a paltry amount would be best e.g. $1 is all we ask?
Recently, I became aware of another version of their solicitation, which raised a couple more questions.
Here, Wikipedia goes to the extent of calling readers who give “exceptional”. This either recognises the fact they have a small, hard-core supporter base, or it assumes people will want to adopt the title and hence give. But is this the kind of “exceptional” you want to be, if you’re not part of the core group?
This solicitation drops the “price of coffee” comparison and makes an amount suggestion – not bad as a technique, people need guidance as to what an appropriate amount is. And legitimizing paltry donations ($2.75) could increase response. But, at the same time, why anchor people so low? And more importantly why, WHY, link that very low amount to the value you get from Wikipedia? Why not make the opposite claim instead: “the knowledge Wikipedia gives you is priceless but with just $5 you can keep it alive for you and everyone else.”
Kiki
P.S. If you have a landing page you’d like to optimize, contact our Behavioural Science team.
10 responses to “Why Does Wikipedia Keep Doing It Like This?”
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Interesting questions! I know for sure that the prompt amounts are very rigorously tested and basically the lower they anchor the more they get. I’m not sure how many of your other questions have been tested – I’ll ask 🙂
So I had a chat with a friend in the Wikimedia Foundation fundraising team, and in short the answers are:
1) “Independence” messaging was one of the first learnings from the testing programme about a decade ago. Unsure if it’s been tested much since. But it probably works because it’s a tangible thing that is credibly threatened.
2) Many variations of positive social proof have been tried and they don’t work, any of them.
3) Don’t believe this has been tested, it might be worth trying.
4) Finding an alternative to coffee has been a mission for at least the last half a decade if not more. The closest we got was in Italian with “metro ticket”. (The Italian Wikipedia community were particularly keen to avoid coffee, because coffee in Italy is different to coffee in the USA). On the anchor amounts – about $5 is optimal in terms of donations from the banners, but lower gets more donors and on balance having more donors at a lower amount is better for the programme, and repeat donations raised over email in subsequent years
5) At several times, behavioural scientists have reviewed Wikipedia’s fundraising but they have never yet been able to propose a change that increases revenue.
Fascinating, thank you both–
Chris, I’m wondering and highly doubtful if Wikipedia tried different social proof messaging to different people. Doing a random nth is the fatal flaw of assuming everyone is the same. Many tests fail not because it bombed entirely but because it had differential effects on different people. of course a random fishing expedition to find differences is just that, random, all noise, no signal. But, with theory up front we can get to a testing protocol (wikipedia perhaps, charity certainly in need) that doesn’t start with a fatal flaw – all people are the same. This applies to nudges as much as any other theory or idea.
The Wikimedia Foundation does pretty much only pure A/B testing as they have a very minimalist approach to data. There are no marketing cookies, there are no analytics. The only targeting of ads is on the scale of nations. So, yes, they’re assuming everyone is the same.
Who knows, maybe a minority of their potential donors would react better to positive social proof while the majority react better to negative social proof?
“Social proof theory says people do what others do, even if that’s not the desirable behavior.” What is left unsaid in that sentence is that people do, or aspire to do, what others in their peer group do or what others do in a group by whom they want to be accepted.
Wikipedia has always positioned itself as the renegade outsider, the outlaw, the nonconformist of the encyclopedia world. It’s free – the anti-establishment, “people’s” encyclopedia.
From that viewpoint, doing what 98% of other people do makes you a square, unhip member of the bourgeoisie. It’s not exactly reverse psychology, but Wikipedia is telling its audience that, by being in the two percent who donate, they are part of a cooler, hipper, more aware elite. And the inference is that, when they make a gift, they’ll actually be earning the social approval of the group they most desire to be in.
I’m also very curious as to what the gender breakdown is among their donors and how that may or may not influence messaging. I know that the demographics of their editors skews overwhelmingly male. Is there any demographic overlap between donors and editors (or maybe it’s the reverse)? Lots of questions here.
Turns out no-one really knows the gender breakdown of Wikipedia donors (as the Wikimedia Foundation has a very minimalist approach to data collection). However it’s sort of assumed to be in line with the gender breakdown of Wikipedia readers, which is 2/3 male (much less than the 85%/90% male for editors/volunteers)
The negative social proof for Wikipedia makes complete sense to me. Part of the reason is because their message interrupting people while they are pursuing specific information, kind of like advertising. Therefore, the impulse is to ignore the fundraising message and scroll on to the article. When the message itself calls out your thought process of wanting to ignore and scroll on, it makes you second guess your instant reaction and think twice about your decision. Very effective in my opinion for basically “fundraising advertising”. Wikipedia has a very unique space on the internet so what works for them, probably won’t apply for most other non-profits.
Because it works.