Making Donors Confront a Decision Not to Give

Sometimes forcing potential donors to take a small extra step when filling out an online form can prompt them to question their own generosity — and result in more donations. When an opera company made it mandatory for customers to acknowledge they had received a donation request before they could complete an online ticket purchase, it generated a windfall in gifts to an outside charity.

A German opera house attached a fundraising request to support disadvantaged children to its ticketing site for three months. Purchasers were shown a donate button, plus three options for rejecting or avoiding the solicitation: “Proceed” (to the ticket purchase), “No, thanks,” or “I have donated already.” All three options allowed people to complete the sale with no further solicitation for charity, but only the “Proceed” button allowed them to do so without explicitly rejecting the charity appeal.

In another treatment, there was no way for ticket purchasers to complete the transaction without explicitly declining to donate. If they clicked either “No, thanks,” or “I have donated already,” they were allowed to complete their purchase. If they clicked “Proceed” to the ticket purchase, they again got the “No, thanks” and “I have donated already” buttons and had to choose one before being able to complete the purchase.

In the second scenario, the donation rate quadrupled, and the average contribution increased from $30.60 to $51. That approach reduced the “social distance” of the internet and mimicked a face-to-face interaction, said Steffen Huck, an economics professor at University College London and one of the study’s authors. Customers were forced to look into the mirror and consider their generosity, he said: “To say ‘no thanks’ is admitting to yourself that you’re greedy.”

The study also assessed the possible impact of charity solicitations on ticket sales. Online purchases dropped during the opera season following the experiment, a result researchers suspect was due in part to patrons being turned off by the donation request.

Mr. Huck said he believes an online campaign with the “No, thanks” and “I have donated already” boxes could generate donations without hurting ticket sales if it is targeted to more frequent opera attendees, but more study is needed.

“We don’t have enough data to nail this,” he said.

The study, “Online Fundraising, Self-Deception, and the Long-Term Impact of Ask Avoidance,” is a working paper by Maja Adena, a research fellow at the Berlin Social Science Center, and Steffen Huck of University College London.