Personalizing triggers for charity actions

Abstract

In this paper we investigate whether there is scope for personalizing triggers in the domain of charitable action. The first of our two studies focuses on actions promoting human rights (via Amnesty International). While participants in a previous exploratory study had indicated that victim attributes (such as gender, religion, and ethnicity) would not matter at all, we found when observing participants' actions that in fact these attributes mattered greatly. Participants tended to select victim attributes similar to their own, showing a clear potential for personalization. These findings were corroborated by a further study in the area of charitable giving (using the KIVA micro-financing website). The paper also discusses implications for digital behavior intervention. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.