Another reason for the counterintuitive effects of thank-you gifts on charitable giving

Zhou Fang; Yong Bian

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.908556

Another reason for the counterintuitive effects of thank-you gifts on charitable giving

Front Psychol. 2022 Jul 29:13:908556. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.908556. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Zhou Fang^{1

2}, Yong Bian^{3

4}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Economic Sciences, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA, United States.
² Department of Economics and Statistics, California State University, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States.
³ Collaborative Innovation Center of Statistical Data Engineering Technology and Application, Zhejiang Gongshang University, Hangzhou, China.
⁴ International Business School, Zhejiang Gongshang University, Hangzhou, China.

Abstract

Current studies on the effect of thank-you gifts on charitable giving are primarily based on the conclusion of a milestone paper, "The counterintuitive effects of thank-you gifts on charitable giving" which argued that thank-you gifts are mainly driven by lower feelings of altruism. This article argues that the question design in "The counterintuitive effects of thank-you gifts on charitable giving" may lead to a biased conclusion. This article added an extra treatment group to the original study and found that the authors neglected the critical impact of participants' inference about the usage of the money.

Keywords: altruism; charitable giving; donation; thank-you gift; waste.