Jen Shang, Americus Reed II, and Rachel Croson
Executive Summary
Consumers’ behavior is often affected by what others have done. In this research, the authors examine a particular kind of others’ behavior—another person’s contribution to a nonprofit entity—and how it affects actual donation behavior and donation intentions. Prior research indicates that consumers may be more affected by the behavior of others when they share some basis for social identification. The authors examine the case when a target learns of a previous donor’s contribution, and they ask whether the match of the target and the previous donor’s identity increases the target donor’s actual donation or donation intentions. They call this effect the “identity congruency effect” and explore its dispositional and transitory moderators.
Study 1 is a field experiment demonstrating the identity congruency effect. The authors find that actual call-in donors give more to a public radio station if they are told that a person with the same identity made a high contribution. The next four experiments investigate the moderating mechanisms behind the observed effect. The authors find that the identity congruency effect is more likely to be observed when consumers have high identity esteem (measured in Laboratory Experiment 2a) or when attention is focused on others (manipulated in Field Experiment 2b). The last two studies (Lab Experiment 3a and Field Experiment 3b) explore the joint impact of these two moderators and identify and replicate a three-way interaction: When consumers have low identity esteem, the identity congruency effect does not emerge, regardless of whether their attention focuses on the self or others, but when consumers have high identity esteem, the identity congruency effect is more likely to be observed when attention focuses on others than when attention focuses on the self.
The five studies make several contributions to the field of marketing and to the knowledge of psychological processes in consumption and donation decision making. This is the first field study to demonstrate that identity congruency influences the level of actual charitable contributions. There has been a call for consumer research to focus more on “messier” environments to buttress the mundane realism of the body of knowledge in the field. Study 1 answers this call.
The authors also contribute to the growing body of work in consumer behavior that illuminates the importance of identity processes on consumption decisions in general. They demonstrate and further build on this research in the domain of donation behavior. More specifically, this is the first study to investigate identity esteem and self/other focus as moderators of identity congruency effects and the first to demonstrate their joint impact on decisions (in this case, on donations). Finally, this study is important because it provides an examination of key identity-based constructs in the substantive domain of nonprofit marketing and thus should be informative for nonprofit theoreticians and consumption behavior researchers, as well as for practitioners who aim to increase charitable contributions.
Biography:
Jen Shang is a doctoral candidate in the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. Her research examines the motivations for giving from the perspectives of social psychology, fund development, nonprofit marketing, and economics. She has published in Journal of Experimental Psychology, Research in Experimental Economics, and Journal of Marketing Research. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Aspen Institute, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the Association of Fundraising Professionals.
Americus Reed II is Associate Professor of Marketing in the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. His research centers on the self-concept and how its multiple identities affect on emotions, attitudes, and behaviors. He has several articles and book chapters on the topic. His research has appeared in Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and Sloan Management Review. He is a past editorial review board member of Journal of Marketing, Journal of Consumer Psychology, and Journal of Consumer Research.
Rachel Croson is Professor of Economics and Management at the University of Texas at Dallas. Her research focuses on social psychological motivations for economic behavior, including bargaining and negotiation, the voluntary provision of public goods, and other strategic settings. She has published in Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Mathematical Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Management Science, and American Journal of Sociology, among others. She currently serves on the editorial board for American Economic Review, Management Science, Experimental Economics, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, and Judgment and Decision Making.
Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. XLV, No. 3, June 2008
View Table of Contents.