Avoiding The Ask: A Field Experiment on Altruism, Empathy, and Charitable Giving

What triggers giving? We explore this in a randomized natural field experiment during the Salvation Army’s annual campaign. Solicitors were at one or both of two main entrances to a supermarket, making the solicitation either easy or difficult to avoid. Additionally, solicitors were either silent, or asked “please give” to passersby. We observed over 17,000 passings over four days, and found dramatic avoidance of the solicitors, but only during a direct ask. Furthermore, asking increased donations 75%. Across all conditions, seeking the solicitor was exceedingly rare. The results do not support static views of altruism, such as inequity aversion, and instead highlight the importance of social cues and psychological features of the giver-receiver interaction. We argue that avoidance could evidence a lack of altruism or self-control strategy to deal with empathic reflexes to give. ∗A version of this paper constituted Trachtman’s senior thesis at Harvard College, for which it was awarded the best thesis prize and summa cum laude honors. We would like to note that Trachtman took the lead responsibility in coordinating and executing the experiment. Erzo Luttmer provided exceptionally helpful advice along the way. We would also like to thank Ned Augenblick, Douglas Bernheim, Rob Boyd, Stefano DellaVigna, Daniel Fessler, Randall Lewis, David Reiley, Michael Schwarz, Joan Silk, and Lise Vesterlund for helpful comments and the NSF and Harvard College for financial support. We especially thank the Salvation Army for cooperation in running the experiment. This research was conducted under full IRB approval