Socia media effects on warm-glow giving
Creators: name: Kuczynski, Adam M.
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2021

description: Research exploring the general dynamics of altruism is varied, but there is limited research exploring specific causes of impure motivation (Lilley &amp; Slonim, 2013). Pure altruism, by contrast, is the idea that a donor will give because there is a need – not with the intention to benefit the donor (Saito, 2015). Subsequent studies showed the relative lack of predictive power of the “pure altruism” model (War, 1982; Roberts, 1984). Therefore, this led to more research of impure motivation (Becker, 1974; Andreoni, 1989, 1990). The theory of warm-glow giving (Andreoni, 1989, 1990, 1993) is a one such economic model that attempts to identify the presence of impure motivation amongst donors. Experiments with the theory have produced mixed results (Crumpler &amp; Grossman, 2008). In order to test the warm-glow theory, laboratory experiments were designed to test a donor’s behavior in “crowding out” scenarios - a concept that suggests an individual’s donation can be supplanted by another donor or organization – thus making the donation unnecessary to the charity. These experiments, such as those by Andreoni (1993), Bolton and Katok (1998), Konow (2010), Crumpler and Grossman (2008), and Luccasen and Grossman (2017), found evidence of impure motivation in during “crowding out” scenarios. To better understand factors that may impact impure motivation, this study focused on one potential impure motivator: social recognition via the proxy of social media recognition (Luccasen &amp; Grossman, 2017; Crumpler &amp; Grossman, 2008; Andreoni, 1990). The first phase of this study recruited 100 subjects to test the theory of potential social media effect on warm-glow giving and explored two hypotheses- H1: Individuals will retain fewer tokens in “crowding out” scenarios when there is potential social media recognition; and H2: Individuals will donate to more charities, regardless of “crowding out,” when there is potential social media recognition. During the second phase, each subject answered several questions to explain how they decided to donate or not to donate during the first phase and addressed three research questions- RQ1: What types of decision-making processes take place for an online donor to prioritize his or her reasoning to donate? RQ2- In what way, if any, does the level of endowment matter to a donor’s impure motivation? RQ3- In what way does the ability to achieve social media recognition matter to a donor’s impure motivation? Both hypotheses are confirmed by the data from Part 1. The key findings are: 1) increased potential reward for the donor decreases warm-glow giving; 2) the perceived promise of social media recognition decreased the effect of the increased potential award on warm-glow giving; 3) donors will focus on themselves or the charity as rationale for why they are giving; and 4) donors will rationalize illogical and impure altruistic motives. This transferrable knowledge can be applied to future research to determine potential predictive models for donations (such as attempting to determine the likelihood of a donation through a social media connection) for use by charities.