How Charitable Appeals Shape Donors’ Donation Choices
研究了正面与负面慈善呼吁如何通过影响捐赠者的认知范围，进而改变其选择自主型还是依赖型捐赠方式，对慈善广告设计有参考价值。
Charitable donors’ decision-making is often informed by the parable of “giving a person a fish versus teaching a person how to fish.” Some donors’ prosocial behaviors are dependency oriented, whereas others are autonomy oriented. Few studies, however, have examined how charitable appeals shape donors’ choices. The authors of the current research investigated this issue in four studies combining various behavioral measures. Results show that positive (versus negative) appeals were more effective in inclining donors toward autonomy-based (versus dependency-based) donations by broadening (versus narrowing) donors’ cognitive scope. This effect was present only when the donors’ motive was to signal their commitment to a cause. These findings, thus, can help enhance the effectiveness of charitable advertisements.