Asking to Give: Moral Licensing and Pro-Social Behavior in the Aggregate

We study the effect of repeated opportunities to behave pro-socially on aggregate pro-social behavior in two laboratory experiments and in field data on charitable giving. In the first experiment we show that two consecutive pro-social decisions (implemented as donations to a charity) lead to the typical pattern of moral licensing: the presence of a first donation lowers the second donation. However, we find that this decrease merely represents a form of substitution between different opportunities to behave pro-socially. Presenting people with multiple opportunities to donate increases aggregate contributions even compared against adequate experimental control conditions. The second experiment studies potential drivers of this result and finds that people seem to respond positively to each additional ask and that the response is independent of whether asks are presented simultaneously or sequentially. We find similar patterns in field data from 73 charity campaigns sent out by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to 455,102 individuals between 2013-2020. Average giving per ask decreases after the first donation, but on average individuals respond with positive donations to each additional ask, meaning that asking more often increases an individual's donations in the aggregate. Our findings indicate that moral licensing does not matter from an aggregate perspective. This is good news for managers of charitable organizations worried about negative effects of repeated fundraising activities and for policymakers who are concerned about negative spillover effects of measures targeted at increasing pro-social behavior.