I. Abstract
Moral licensing touches on relevant everyday behaviors related to welfare, job hiring, ambiguous racial attitudes, charity donations, and consumer purchases (1). If you have ever tried to diet, exercised for an extended period at a higher intensity than normal, and subsequently ate a “cheat meal” after burning calories or losing weight, you would have committed an act of self-licensing. A billionaire might donate a small share of their wealth to charity and then feel morally licensed to invest in environmentally harmful oil projects without the usual sting of moral repugnance. In this way, self-licensing evolves into moral dilemmas: the pernicious effects of moral licensing.
It is the chief purpose of this commentary to examine moral licensing—the problems it creates for different charitable initiatives and the solutions provided in nonprofit, disaster-event, for-profit, and greenwashed charitable enterprises (the extreme licensing dilemmas similar to the example of the billionaire). This paper is addressed to charitable strategists and policymakers who have not yet adopted effective solutions to moral licensing.
II. History of Effective Altruism
A salient factor in the discussion on the best measurable solutions to moral licensing is the effective altruism movement (EA) and the advice they provide, as they are often hailed as the most impactful charity-givers today. This paper weighs these solutions in the context of moral licensing, and considers EA's potential future.
The history of effective altruism (EA) begins with Peter Singer’s 1970 paper “Famine, Affluence, and Morality (2).” In this paper, Singer makes an incredibly provocative argument: If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we are obligated, morally, to do it.
With this, EA recognizes the special power for comparatively wealthy agents to make a difference. Even if some are considered “poor” by American standards (paycheck to paycheck earners in the United States), their poverty is no match for the world’s poorest communities, who live on (per the World Bank’s standards) “less than $1.90 per day (3).”
This places all Americans in the top one percent of all earners globally. This gives seemingly “normal earners” a special efficacy for good: High-income countries can save lives with a morally insignificant amount of money. Charity becomes a primary weapon, and EA will provide intermittent solutions to the effects of moral licensing on charitable organizations in the paper’s key areas. It is important to note that this paper rests on EA’s robust research on the determination of which charities are most effective and ethical at providing their services.
III. Psychological Research and Charity Impacts
It is necessary to discuss the current psychological research of moral licensing, and how psychology is intimately connected to charity. Psychologists Uzma Khan and Ravi Dhar found that a prior choice can boost an agent’s self concept (4). This happens without explicit intention or awareness, and can unsparingly affect daily decisions most consider trivial: A prior “positive” decision (such as donating to charity) can lead one to “see” themselves in a positive light.
Researchers Wen-Bin Chiou, Chao-Chin Yang, and Chin-Sheng Wan have corroborated this trend: Those who consume multivitamin pills and supplements are more likely to engage in unhealthy or risk-taking behaviors in the future, such as casual sex, excessive drinking, or other hedonistic pursuits (5).
Similarly, consumer choices are implicated in psychology. This paper recognizes that charity becomes another facet driven by consumer appetite. Flawed agents donate to charity and purchase from grocery stores all the same, and as a result, consumer psychology becomes critical for moral licensing and charitable initiatives.
And finally, Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong discovered that purchasing green products may license those to cheat and steal (6). Licensing in extreme forms, then, may reduce the guardrails of basic decency.
IV. Nonprofit Charities and Moral Licensing
Our first key area discusses the problem of moral licensing in relation to nonprofit charitable initiatives, or traditional charities. To start, participants who were led to affirm their own virtuous traits subsequently donated to a small charity of their choice (under 10$) far less (about $1.11 on average) than those who thought about negative traits (about $5.56) (7). Those who have positive self-concepts donate markedly less than those on the contrary (Khan and Dhar)—a classic form of moral licensing.
To combat this dilemma, EA proposes a spirit of collective motivation—shifting the moral weight not to the individual, but to a collective community of good-doers. In other words, agents should not evaluate their past actions—whether good or bad—upon making a charitable donation. Rather, they should evaluate the state of the crisis, the cause of the charity, and the collective benefits yet to reap if everyone plays their part.
Charitable advertisements (which can include anything that prompts charitable giving, not just TV/online advertisements) that frame charity as a communal obligation could see an ethical increase in funds. Individuals are more likely to give, psychologically, if those around them are giving. Charity strategists can use this information to target populations of donors.
However, critics argue moral licensing still remains an issue. Researchers Elisabeth Dütschke, Manuel Frondel, Joachim Schleich, and Colin Vance argue that virtuous behavior in one domain may free people to be less virtuous in other domains (8). EA’s collective obligation strategy removes the grace of charity, places the individual in a “de-individualized obligatory charity machine,” which may cause an agent to “do their part” for charity and “move on” to licensing in other areas. In this world, charities feed the flame.
EA responds with another solution: Charity ought to be removed from emotion. We seem to ignore practical, analytical implications of our moral actions when emotion is involved. This is the case seen in the PlayPump—a design to provide clean water by using a merry-go-round mechanism, turning children’s play into the energy to pump water, which ended up creating a net-negative impact for affected African communities (9). Simple designs proved more practical.
As moral licensing is typically conflated with the preservation of self-concepts, it is the recommendation of this paper that charitable strategists recognize these EA solutions in moral decision making. Charities should not attempt to hijack an agent’s self-concept: Doing so might raise more funds (in certain events), but is unethical, since it simultaneously incentivizes moral licensing by “tricking” an agent to overvalue their commitment to a charity. Advertisements, then, should be analytically streamlined to not only the truth of the charity’s work but to the direct, precise, and calculable effectiveness agents can make with a set donation.
As communal obligation-phrasing is more ethical (at reducing moral licensing) and more effective than individual moral weight-phrasing (at raising ethical funds), it is the recommendation of this paper to target distinct populations of potential donors with emotion-absolved advertisement. This not only reduces moral licensing but preserves an agent’s right to the truth; similarly, this can be more successful at raising funds/awareness for the charity, as donors are typically aware of emotion-laden advertisements and/or subliminal persuasion tactics commonly used by advertisements today. This paper estimates that charities do not consider ethical reasoning of this sort, especially EA-backed charities.
V. Disaster Relief and Moral Licensing
EA stands against supporting charities in the “heat of the moment,” in scenarios of disaster relief (10). For example, an earthquake in Japan received similar global attention and donations to one in Haiti despite Japan’s comparatively robust disaster infrastructure. Effective altruists view this as problematic—donating to Haiti would have saved far more lives per dollar—which makes, once more, emotion to blame.
Those who are prone to moral licensing fall under the illusion that their donation (even if it is proposed communally) keeps charities that advertise financially afloat. Agents often do not realize charities advertise out of relative luxury; not out of desperation (11). And most importantly, many agents do not know of EA’s warnings insofar as emotion and analytical decision making go—it seems that EA does not consider this ubiquitous fact.
Therefore, it is important for charitable strategists to reduce the advertisement of “needs.” While spreading awareness to a cause is acceptable, charities must be honest that they do not require pressing aid. This is built on the moral comparison that over-dramatizing certain situations (whether through dramatized personal narratives or subtle obfuscations of the truth) have analogous effects to direct lying. To combat this problem, the solution for charitable strategists is once again: A reciprocation of honesty. Charities must be completely honest in their fundraising efforts because moral agents expect them to be—this ensures even charities that are not deemed the most effective/ethical by EA remain tethered to ethical drivers.
VI. For-profit Initiatives and Moral Licensing
It is necessary to briefly cover an experiment that was conducted on the multi-billion dollar vending corporation PayPal. In 2024, Susan Athey (et al.) found that “rounding up” on PayPal payments—when prompted—had little to no moral licensing effect for subsequent actions (rounding up is usually when an individual agrees to donate a small leftover sum of change from a purchase to charity, or in other words, is a common example of a micro-donation) (12). Individuals who are prompted at higher frequencies, too, are often likely led to give more to charity, with little-to-no moral licensing effect if the donation is not sizable to the agent in any way.
For the consumer, then, for-profit initiatives are beneficial. This reduces (or absolves) the pernicious effects of moral licensing. EA proposes solutions to licensing that involve repetitive prompts for donations and agent-controlled automatic donations set at, for example, paycheck intervals. However, it seems there is a limited discussion of the efficacy of for-profit rounding up initiatives promulgated by corporations’ charities. EA dismisses these initiatives because these charities are often ineffective at using these donations.
Therefore, it is the recommendation of this paper that strategists of EA-endorsed charities take advantage of repetitive prompts. This ensures the most effective charities are acclimatizing to the global trend—economies’ dependence on mega-corporations—a utilization which could propel a future age of genuine altruism and reduce the effects of moral licensing. EA-charities must partner with corporations, for example, to reserve spots at checkout isles, so they can advertise their most effective charitable initiatives. Charities must constantly advertise everywhere a consumer may be. The rigorous research EA has provided—a calculation of the most effective charities in the world—should be applied in modern contexts. EA should push for this initiative.
VII. The Greenwashing Dilemma
Even if EA-endorsed charities innovate for the future, micro-donations “save the face” of wealthy organizations who are still doing harm behind the scenes. Recall that a billionaire might donate a few million dollars to charity to clear his name from offshore oil drilling projects, or perhaps, a billionaire might implement “EA micro-donations” in his business locations while simultaneously investing in harmful projects. The billionaire is licensed to do this: They see themselves as virtuous for their charity, and have the subsequent leeway to invest.
In this extreme case, EA provides its best philosophical solution: A “membership equals stewardship” principle, or, by virtue of being a member of a community one ought to take care of it. Practically, a billionaire can live comfortably on $500,000 dollars a year—this still places this person in the top one percent of the top one percent. So, this billionaire ought not only to preserve the EA-rounding up commitment but should also donate a morally-insignificant portion of their earnings to EA-aligned charities. In practice, however, does this go far enough?
This paper considers the notion that “every billionaire is a policy failure” (attributed to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, U.S. Representative), in that every billionaire who still has access to their funds is licensing their own lifestyle. A billionaire is not acting out of personal choice, rather, a billionaire is a symptom for impractical economic policy, a calling for reform.
This paper addresses the systematic changes EA cannot provide in their philosophy: Policymakers should consider remanding laws that permit egregious wealth inequality, and charitable strategists ought to target campaigns in communities that are wealthy.
VIII. Conclusion
Charitable initiatives often struggle with the effects of moral licensing. It is this paper’s suggestion to use EA solutions in some areas (communal-obligation framing, unemotional advertisements, agent-controlled automatic donations, and the value judgement on the effectiveness of most modern charities), and to go farther in other areas (a demand of honesty for more effective/ethical donations, rounding-up initiatives, and comprehensive wealth reform).
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