Online Fundraising, Self-Image, and the Long-TermImpact of Ask Avoidance

This is just another link post to a donation focused academic paper I came across. They aim to understand the effects of self-deceiving behavior in the context of a donation request during the checkout process in the ticketing platform of an opera house in Germany and find evidence that people on average indeed engage in self-deceiving behavior when given the option to do. They also highlight interaction effects of donation campaigns with normal operations which should be considered when implementing donation campaigns.

Thus, the paper may be interesting to EAs engaged in fundraising activities or simply interested in average donation behaviors.

Abstract. We provide the first field evidence pointing at the role of pure self-image, in-dependent of social image, in charitable giving. In an online fundraising campaign for asocial youth project run on an opera ticket booking platform, we document how individuals seem to engage in self-deception to preserve their self-image. In addition, we provide evidence on stark adverse long-run effects of the fundraising campaign for ticket sales.“Avoiding the ask,”opera customers who faced more insistent online fundraising buy fewer tickets in the following season. Our results suggest that fundraising management should not decide in isolation about their campaigns, even if very successful.Rather, broader operational concerns have to be considered.