Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Examining When Impersonal Donation Solicitations are Successful

这项研究的重点是个人如何以及何时决定向社会组织捐款。它关注的是非个人募捐如何影响这一决定，其中“非个人”指的是通过直接邮件、电子邮件和电话（即不是通过个人熟人）提出的任何捐赠请求。虽然过去的研究表明，人们向社会组织捐款是为了表达对其目标和活动的支持，但这项研究表明，为什么提到这些问题的募捐实际上会减少人？美国人愿意捐款。为了说明原因，这项研究综合了心理学和行为经济学的两个观点：(1)当人们能够证明自己花钱是合理的时候，他们就会花钱；(2)当人们被提醒他们的个人财务困难时，相对随意的购买，比如捐赠，很难证明是合理的。结合这两个观点可以得出以下假设：提及那些让人们想起个人财务困难的问题——比如失业、通货膨胀和负担不起的必需品——会降低要钱的有效性，不管这些问题有多重要。另一方面，提到人们关心的问题，而不是提醒人们他们的个人财务困难，会增加要求钱的有效性。这项工作使用了几个实验室实验来验证这一假设。在所有情况下，受试者都有机会向真实的组织捐款。总之，这些实验直接验证了所提出的心理机制。他们表明，提到人们关心的问题会让他们想起个人财务困难，这会降低他们捐款的意愿，因为这让他们很难证明捐款的合理性。在这种情况下，人们反而选择存钱，以便把钱花在必需品上。此外，实验还表明，提到人们关心的问题，而不是提醒他们个人经济困难，会增加他们的捐赠意愿。通过在一个共同的社会背景下整合心理学的见解，这项工作澄清了人们是如何决定捐赠的，以及捐赠请求的属性是如何影响这一决定的。它为未来研究人们如何决定向任何社会组织捐款提供了基础。更广泛地说，这里的见解显示了社会组织如何使用非个人的征求来扩大他们的捐助者基础。在某种程度上，我们的民主受益于参与和活跃于各种社会组织的公民，了解募捐活动成功的条件是一个重要的规范目标。

This research focuses on how and when individuals decide to donate money to social organizations. It focuses on how impersonal solicitations affect this decision, where "impersonal" refers to any donation request via direct mail, e-mail, and telephone (i.e. not via personal acquaintances). Although past research shows that people donate money to social organizations to express support for their goals and activities, this work shows why solicitations that mention such issues can actually decrease people?s willingness to donate money. To show why, this research synthesizes two ideas from psychology and behavioral economics: (1) people spend money when they are able to justify the expenditure to themselves, and (2) relatively discretionary purchases, such as donations, are hard to justify when people are reminded about their personal financial struggles. Combining these two ideas leads to the following hypothesis: mentioning issues that remind people about their personal financial struggles--such as unemployment, inflation, and unaffordable necessities--diminishes the effectiveness of requests for money, regardless of the importance of such issues. On the other hand, mentioning issues that people care about and do not remind people about their personal financial struggles increases the effectiveness of requests for money.This work uses several laboratory experiments to test this hypothesis. In all cases subjects are given the opportunity to donate real money to real organizations. Together, the experiments directly test the proposed psychological mechanism. They show that mentioning issues that people care about that remind them about personal financial struggles decreases their willingness to donate money by making it difficult to justify spending money on a donation. In this situation, people instead choose to save their money in order to spend it on necessities. Moreover, the experiments also show that mentioning issues that people care about and do not remind them about personal financial struggles increases their willingness to donate.By integrating psychological insights within a common social context, this work clarifies how people decide to donate money and how attributes of donation solicitations affect this decision. It provides a foundation for future research on how people decide to donate money to any social organization. More broadly, the insights here show how social organizations can broaden their donor base using impersonal solicitation. To the extent that our democracy benefits from citizens who are engaged and active in various social organizations, understanding the conditions under which solicitations for donations are successful fulfills an essential normative goal.