Hedonic Donations for Me But Not for Thee: Donors and Recipients Have Mismatched Preferences for Hedonic Versus Utilitarian Products.
Abstract:
Recipients of charity have varied needs, and charities aim to serve those needs by providing them with different products. As the central goal of any charitable organization is to help the recipients it serves, it is critical to understand the extent to which donors’ preferences align with what recipients want. Across eight experiments, we demonstrate that donors are less inclined to donate to charities that provide hedonic products (e.g., cosmetics, entertainment magazines) compared to utilitarian products (e.g., toiletries, science magazines) to their recipients. This is due to the perception that donated hedonic (vs. utilitarian) products are wasteful. Importantly, recipients do not share these preferences, and, if anything, they prefer to receive hedonic products over utilitarian ones. In the context of purchasing, preferences reverse, highlighting the uniqueness of hedonic consumption in the charitable domain. We leverage our theoretical framework to identify two interventions that organizations providing hedonic donations can use to bolster giving. First, the effect attenuates when organizations encourage donors to adopt the recipient's perspective. Second, if a hedonic product is re-positioned as utilitarian, consumers are more willing to donate. Thus, we provide insights into donor-recipient preference asymmetries, as well as strategies that fundraisers can employ to address them.
Aviva Philipp-Muller
Aviva Philipp-Muller is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University. She completed her B.Sc. at the University of Toronto, and her MA and PhD at The Ohio State University, where she was a doctoral fellow with the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. She has won several prestigious awards for her research, including being named an Emerging Thought Leader by SFU in 2023 and making SFU's Top 20 Scholars list for 2024. Her research centres on how to help consumers make decisions that better society and improve their own well-being. Her research has been published in leading academic journals, such as The Journal of Consumer Research, Psychological Science, The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Management Science. Her work has also been featured in the popular press, including The National Post and the CBC. She is a contributor to The Wall Street Journal. She has been a Principal Investigator or co-applicant on over $2.5 million of grant funding.
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