What you don't know, can't hurt you: Avoiding donation requests for environmental causes

Abstract

Recent research suggests that people are willing to pay to avoid requests for prosocial behavior. However, it is unknown whether this applies to private pro-environmental requests. To study this, we conducted a pre-registered, incentivized online experiment where participants played two consecutive dictator games with an environmental charity of their choice. In stage 1, we varied the type of dictator game and the information provided in a 2 × 2 factorial between-subject design: (i) a standard dictator game versus one with a costly opt-out option; (ii) with or without social information about the average donation made by participants in a previous session. All participants played a standard dictator game in stage 2, the primary aim of which was to capture temporal spillovers from stage 1. Overall, 9 % of participants opted out, leading to lower donations in the dictator game with the costly opt-out option. Providing social information decreases donations in the standard dictator game and appears to increase opt-outs when the costly opt-out option is available, but not statistically significant. Distinct spillover effects emerged depending on the options available and decisions made in stage 1, indicating that the context and motivation of the initial behavior affect the direction of the temporal spillover.