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Jonah Berger: Vote by donating for
this cause or that cause, or even for one specific cause.
Vote with your preferences. Do
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you like this thing better, or
that? It increases people's likelihood of donation,
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and increases the amount
donated overall. Dan Loney: How does this
potentially impact how an
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organization has to think about
the process of trying to draw out those donations from the
public? Is it any different for
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a group, rather than an
individual? - Welcome to <i>The Ripple Effect</i>,
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the podcast that
takes you on a journey through the minds of Wharton faculty. I'm your host, Dan Loney, and in
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each episode, we'll be diving
deep into the inspiration behind the groundbreaking research that
Wharton professors have
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conducted and exploring how
their findings resonate with the world today. - Well, charitable
giving can have a variety of
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reasons behind it, but research
by author and Wharton School Marketing Professor Joanna
Berger says that when there are
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dueling preferences at play,
there's a potential for a higher level of pro social giving. And
Jonah joins us right now to
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discuss his work. Hi, Jonah,
great to have you back. Thanks for having me. - Talk about this component
of dueling preferences
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and how important it is
to this process of pro social giving. You know, we often—
nonprofits and even individuals
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often ask others for help. They
say, "Hey, will you donate money? Will you donate time? Please,
help us." Obviously, helping
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these organizations, helping
these causes, is really important, but people don't
always do it. And so one
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question we had is, could there
be a way to encourage individuals to give more?
Whether it's donating their time
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or their money. And we were
inspired a little bit by something that you may have seen
in your own life a lot more
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recently, at least in the past
five years or so. Which is, walk into a coffee shop, and rather
than simply asking you for tips—
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you know, tip the barista if
they did a good job— the coffee shop might say, "Hey, vote
with your tips. Do you like <i>Star</i>
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<i>Wars</i> or <i>Star Trek</i>? Do you like
dogs or cats? Do you like— which
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ice cream do you like better,
vanilla or chocolate?" And while in that situation, it can seem a
little trivial, a little bit
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silly, we wondered if similar
approaches might be helpful to getting people to donate. What
these approaches do is they
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don't only ask people for money,
they give people opportunity to express their preferences. Hey,
you're not just asking me to pay
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you for doing a good job, but
you're asking me which thing I like better. And so we were
wondering, would people be more
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likely to donate, to give, to do
things, if doing those things was an opportunity to express
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their preferences to others
and the world? And so seemingly, by
having that component of self
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expression, it probably builds a
connection between the two— between the two elements that
are in the transaction.
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Certainly. And I think the
bigger idea is, you know, people love expressing themself, right?
Think about how much money
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people spend on cars, clothes
and houses and other things that will allow them to express their
identity. Similarly, people love
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talking about their preferences,
right? People love talking about where they went on vacation, or what
they bought or things that they
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like. And so people have an
ingrained value of self expression. And what our
research shows is that people
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actually would be willing to pay to
get this opportunity to self express. When asking people for
donations, for example, rather
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just asking them to give money,
asking them to give money in a way that gives them a chance to
express their preferences, vote
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by donating for this cause or
that cause, or even for one specific cause, vote with your
preferences. Do you like this
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thing better, or that? It
increases people's likelihood of donation and increases the
amount donated overall.
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How does this potentially impact how an organization
has to think about the process of trying to draw
out those donations from the
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public? Is it any different
for a group rather than an individual? You know, I think as
an organization, we are often
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trying to get people to give
more. To give more time, to give more effort, to give more
resources. But it's challenging
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to get people to do that. And so
the simple takeaway from this research is, look, if you're a
nonprofit trying to increase
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donations, asking people to
donate and express their preferences, giving them this
preference duel as a way of
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doing it is a way to increase
donations. And sure, you can ask about things that are related to
your cause. So if I'm the World
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Wildlife Fund Foundation, for
example, World Wildlife Foundation, "Which animal do you like better?" is
certainly relevant to my cause.
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But you can also ask things that
aren't necessarily relevant to your cause. You can ask people
which baseball team they prefer
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or which sport they like
better, or which season they prefer. People like expressing
themselves and so giving them
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opportunities to do so can can
increase and create benefits for companies and organizations.
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You mention in the research about identity playing an important
role in developing these pro-
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social behaviors as well. How
does that occur? Well, this is exactly what we're
talking about, right?
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People like having particular identities, but they also like
expressing those. They like both
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expressing them to others,
signaling those identities. "I want to show you that I'm a
sports fan or that I'm knowledgeable
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about a particular topic." But
also even for themselves. Even if no one else is going to see
it, I like expressing myself.
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Because it helps me understand
and express who I am. And so identity plays a big role here.
If we're not giving people an
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opportunity to express something
that connects to their identity, it's probably not going to work.
If we give people a
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preference, a dueling
preference, between two things they don't care about— I don't
know. You know, which— which type
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of mulch do you like better?
Most people don't care about mulch. I'm sure some people do,
but most people don't. They're
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probably not going to vote.
They're probably not going to be more likely to donate, because
it doesn't really have anything
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to do with them. It doesn't
touch on their identity. But if we ask them a question that
touches on their identity or
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something they care about— which
political candidate do you like? Which sports team do you prefer?
Are you a cat person or a dog
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person? All those things are—
people— things that people care more, that connect to their
identities. And so they're more
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likely to pay to express those
preferences. And so then, when you're doing the field test on
something like— like tipping, I
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guess it really is trying to
find out the best approach to draw a response from the
consumer.
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Certainly, you know, if we're in Philadelphia, for
example, which is your favorite
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team? You know, the Eagles or
the 76ers? But if we're down in North Carolina, it's like, do
you like Duke, or UNC?
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When we're out in California,
maybe it's, are you a Cal fan or a Berkeley fan, are you
a Stanford fan? It's
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understanding your audience and
the things they care about and that are important to them, and
creating these opportunities to
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make choices that allow them to
express them. And so for those organizations involved in this,
this is almost a little bit of—
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you talk about always wanting
organizations to give. Well, that's a little bit of the— kind
of the upping the ante
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philosophy in terms of the level
of donations that may be— may come your way. Yeah. And I think, you know, when
we think about donations
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there are two questions.
Are people going to donate at all? And how much are they
gonna donate?
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And— you know, it's important to encourage both
of those things to occur. You
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know, am I suggesting that for
huge gifts, for— you know, million dollar gifts— giving
people the opportunity to
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express their preference is
gonna play a big role? Probably not, right? Somebody who's
giving a million dollars to a
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cause is going to care a lot
about the cause. They're gonna need a lot of time to think
about it. But for smaller
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donations, whether it's tips to
the barista, or whether it's supporting a social cause that
we care about, if I'm on the
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fence about whether to donate or
not, or I'm trying to understand how much to donate, connecting
it to my identity and giving me
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opportunity to express that
identity is going to make me
more likely to donate. What do you think
this type of research means,
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then, for charitable giving in
general, longer term? You know, I think with any strategy, you
have to be a little careful in
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that if it's overused, if people—
it's too familiar, where it feels like it's not authentic,
it's— it's not going to work. And
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so if every single nonprofit
starts using this particular type approach, it's probably gonna
eventually— its effectiveness may
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die out. That's— at least in the
short term, given that not everybody's using this, it can
be a great way to boost things,
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at least into the near and
immediate future. - But would you expect that because different people
would be involved in different
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organizations, that there would
be some nuanced difference in how individuals in different
organizations or different
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groups would approach this? Oh, certainly.
I mean, as we talked about, it's got to be something
that relates to my identity. It's
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got to be something that I care
about. And so when applying this strategy, I need to think about,
well, who is my audience? What
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do they care about? And how can
I pick a preference or a choice that is relevant to that?
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Jonah, always great to talk with you and get your insight.
Thanks very much. Thanks for having me.
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You got it. Jonah
Berger, Wharton School Marketing Professor. - Thank you for listening
to <i>The Ripple Effect</i>.
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