Marketing Science 2017

Signaling Virtue: Charitable Behavior Under Consumer Elective Pricing

Minah H. Jung¹; Leif D. Nelson²; Uri Gneezy³; Ayelet Gneezy³

¹ New York University · ² University of California, Berkeley · ³ University of California San Diego

Abstract

Two field experiments examined generosity under consumer elective pricing. In shared social responsibility (SSR), consumers choose how much to pay, knowing that a percentage of their payment goes to support a charitable cause. Replicating past research, consumers in our experiments were sensitive to the presence of charitable giving, paying more when a portion of their payment went to charity. Notably, however, they were largely insensitive to the percentage of payment allocated to charity—customers paid little more when 99% of the payment went to charity than when only 1% went to charity. Neither self-selection nor social pressure fully explained higher payments under SSR. Data and the online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2016.1018 .

DOI

10.1287/mksc.2016.1018

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APA 7 MLA 9 Chicago (author–date) Harvard Elsevier Harvard (JFE, JBF…) The Accounting Review Academy of Management American Marketing Association INFORMS (Management Science) Copy citation Copied ✓