The Effects of the Facial Expression of Beneficiaries in Charity Appeals and Psychological Involvement on Donation Intentions

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/nml.21261
• Date: 01 June 2017
• Published date: 01 June 2017
• Author: Xiaoxia Cao,Lei Jia

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N M  L, vol. 27, no. 4, Summer 2017 © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/nml.21261

Journal sponsored by the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, Case Western Reserve University.

Research Articles

 e Eff ects of the Facial Expression of

Benefi ciaries in Charity Appeals and

Psychological Involvement on Donation

Intentions

EVIDENCE FROM AN ONLINE EXPERIMENT

Xiaoxia Cao , 1 Lei Jia 2

1 University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee , 2 University of Wyoming

To increase the effectiveness of fundraising campaigns, many human-need charities include

pictures of beneficiaries in their ads. However, it is unclear when and why the facial expression

of these beneficiaries (sad versus happy) may influence the effectiveness of charity ads. To answer

these questions, an experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of the facial expression on

donation intentions, while considering the moderating role of psychological involvement with

charities. It found that psychological involvement with charities moderated the impact of the

facial expression on donation intentions in that seeing a picture of a sad versus happy person

increased intentions to give among participants with lower levels of psychological involvement,

whereas the reverse was true for highly involved participants. The moderating effect of psycho-

logical involvement was fully explained by the perceived efficacy of one ’ s donation. The findings

not only contribute to our understanding of the effect of the facial expression of people pictured

in charity appeals on donation behavior, but also suggest that nonprofits should tailor their

ads to target potential donors with various levels of psychological involvement with charities.

Keywords: fundraising campaigns , images of people in need , facial expression , psycholog-

ical involvement with charities , response efficacy , online experiments

CHARITABLE ORGANIZATIONS MAKE IMPORTANT ECONOMIC and social contributions

in the United States, as is evidenced by the number of people they employ and serve (Benda-

pudi, Singh, and Bendapudi 1996 ; Polonsky and Grau 2008 ). A considerable portion of their

funding comes from charitable contributions (National Center for Charitable Statistics 2013 ).

Correspondence to: Xiaoxia Cao, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the Department of Journalism, Advertising, and

Media Studies, Bolton 510, P.O. Box 413, Milwaukee, WI 53201. Email: xcao@uwm.edu.

Nonprofi t Management & Leadership DOI: 10.1002/nml

458 CAO, JIA

Although individual giving constitutes the largest source of charitable donations (Giving USA

Foundation 2015 ), fundraising has always been a challenge for nonprofit organizations (Center

for Effective Philanthropy 2013 ). Hence, it is important to understand how to design persua-

sive fundraising messages to elicit donations from individuals (Bekkers and Wiepking 2011 ).

To increase the effectiveness of fundraising campaigns, many human-need charities (such

as those helping children in need) include pictures of beneficiaries in their ads (Burt and

Strongman 2005 ; Small and Verrochi 2009 ). Some of these ads use positive pictures of peo-

ple in need (for example, photos of happy and well-fed children) whereas others use negative

images (for example, pictures of sad and poorly clothed children), which raises the question

of what kind of pictures are more effective.

Although a number of studies have examined the relative persuasiveness of positive and nega-

tive images of beneficiaries (Burt and Strongman 2005 ; Dyck and Coldevin 1992 ; Pancer et al.

1979 ; Small and Verrochi 2009 ), they yielded inconsistent findings. The inconsistency may

be partly due to the stimuli used in these studies. With the exception of one study (Small and

Verrochi 2009 ), which manipulated only the facial expression of people in need, many of these

studies manipulated the valence of the images by altering at least two of the following fac-

tors—needy people ’ s facial expression (Faseur and Geuens 2010 ; Kim 2014 ; Tine and Maggie

2008; Wang 2008 ), appearance (healthy versus ill; Kim 2014 ), clothing, attractiveness (Burt

and Strongman 2005 ; Dyck and Coldevin 1992 ; Pancer et al. 1979 ), and experience (Chang

and Lee 2009 ; Faseur and Geuens 2010 ; Wang 2008 ). Each of these factors may shape people ’ s

responses independently. For example, attractive people are found to receive more help than

unattractive people (Wilson 1978 ), and sad-faced people in need tend to elicit more donations

than their happy-faced counterparts (Small and Verrochi 2009 ). Hence, lumping together

multiple factors into the valence manipulation may have contributed to the mixed findings

regarding the relative persuasiveness of positive versus negative images. This is because the

combination of more than one factor could cancel out the impact of each factor or generate an

additive effect or even a synergy, depending upon the nature of the combination under study.

The inconsistent findings about the relative impact of positive versus negative images of

beneficiaries may also be attributed to the types of solicitations under examination—for

example, door-to-door solicitations versus countertop solicitations (that is, solicitations made

through a donation jar or box placed on a check-out counter)—because strategies that work

for one type of solicitation may or may not work for other types of solicitations (Thornton,

Kirchner, and Jacobs 1991 ). Furthermore, the observed inconsistency may be due to differ-

ences in the participants of these studies. For example, some studies were conducted among

donors of an organization (Dyck and Coldevin 1992 ), whereas others used convenience sam-

ples of potential donors recruited from various settings such as a shopping mall (Pancer et al.

1979 ) and a college campus (Small and Verrochi 2009 ). This suggests that individual differ-

ences such as donor status and psychological involvement with charities may also account for

the inconsistent findings.

The mixed findings about the relative persuasiveness of positive and negative images of

people in need make it difficult for nonprofit organizations to know what type of images

should be used in their fundraising campaigns. To help clarify these mixed findings and pro-

vide clearer guidance for campaign message design, it is imperative for researchers to conduct

further research that disentangles the impacts of contributing factors to image valence (for

example, beneficiaries’ facial expression, appearance, and clothing) as well as considers the