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How to Boost Charitable Giving
Every day, people give up their hard-earned cash for good causes. This kind of generosity—accepting a personal sacrifice to benefit others—is often referred to as “altruism”. At a larger collective scale, it literally saves lives by moving money from places where it has a relatively small impact to places where it has a relatively big impact. $10 for the average American might buy lunch, whereas $10 for a poverty-stricken family in Mozambique might buy mosquito nets that save a child’s life.
Given the enormous social impact that charitable giving can have, it’s important to understand why people donate their money and how we can encourage more of it. In a recent study, researchers tested charitable giving in a real-life setting without scrimping on scientific rigor. The question they asked was simple: Are people swayed more by self-benefiting motivations or altruistic motivations when deciding whether to donate money?
Warm glow vs altruism
In April 2021, a research paper published in Nature Human Behaviour examined what kinds of messages convince people to donate money. Doing this kind of study in a lab is fine, but it can’t definitively tell you how results…
