Department of Management, Ben-Gurion University, Be'er Sheva, Israel.
Department of Management, Monash University, Caulfield East, Australia.
PLoS One. 2022 Dec 1;17(12):e0278391. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0278391. eCollection 2022.
Online fundraisers often showcase information about the number of donations received and the proximity to the campaign goal. This practice follows research on descriptive norms and goal-directed motivation, which predicts higher contributions as the number of donors increases and as the campaign goal is approached. However, across three studies, we demonstrate that when the campaign is close to completion, individuals give more when they see that there are few (vs. many) donors to the campaign. We observe this result across real campaigns on a fundraising website and obtain causal evidence for this effect in two laboratory experiments. We find that this effect is driven in part by an increase in the perceived progress that one's donation makes towards reaching the campaign goal. This work identifies a counterintuitive consequence of norm-based marketing appeals and has important implications for fundraisers.
在线筹款活动通常展示有关收到的捐款数量和接近活动目标的信息。这种做法遵循描述性规范和目标导向动机的研究，该研究预测随着捐款人的增加和活动目标的接近，捐款会增加。然而，在三项研究中，我们证明了当活动接近完成时，当看到活动的捐款人很少（而不是很多）时，个人的捐款会更多。我们在筹款网站上的真实活动中观察到了这一结果，并在两个实验室实验中获得了这一效应的因果证据。我们发现，这种效果部分是由于人们的捐款在实现活动目标方面所取得的进展感的增加所驱动的。这项工作揭示了基于规范的营销诉求的一个反直觉的后果，对筹款人具有重要意义。
