Unequal Valuations of Lives and What to Do About It : The Role of Identifiability, Numbers, and Age in Charitable Giving

Sammanfattning: Many people choose to donate money to help victims of humanitarian crises. However, people’s donation decisions often fail to reflect that all victims are equally valuable to help. Instead, some victims seem to be favored. This thesis aims to better understand valuations of lives by looking at how people respond to charity appeals that differ on three factors: level of identifiability (if there is an identified victim or not), numbers in need (if there is one, few, or many victims in need), and age (if the victim is a child or an adult). This thesis also tests two kinds of interventions in charitable giving aimed to make people value lives more equally regarding numbers in need and the identifiability of victims.   Paper I investigated how the identifiable victim effect (i.e., more willingness to help an identified victim than unidentified victims) influences people’s donation decisions if they are reminded of alternative uses of money (i.e., opportunity cost). In two studies, participants (N = 2397) saw a charity appeal that either included an identified victim or not, while either receiving an opportunity cost reminder or not. The results showed that for a one-time donation decision, people became less willing to donate when reminded of opportunity cost, but mainly for non-identified charity appeals.   Paper II investigated how the victim’s age relates to the identifiable victim effect. In three studies, participants (N = 1508) saw a charity appeal that either helped children or adults, and either included an identified victim or not. The results showed that people did not donate more if the charity appeal included an identified victim, regardless of whether the victim was a child or an adult, but that people were more motivated to help or more willing to donate to children than adults.   Paper III investigated two types of deliberation interventions for the singularity effect (i.e., increased willingness to help a single identified victim over a group of identified victims). In two studies, participants (N = 900) saw a charity appeal that either depicted one or eight identified children in need, and either got an intervention prompting them to rely on deliberate thinking, an intervention asking them to rate the importance of four decision-relevant attributes, or no intervention at all. The singularity effect was found in control conditions, but not in either of the intervention conditions. However, this was at the expense of decreasing the help to the single victim, without increasing help to the group of victims.  Paper IV investigated the unit asking intervention in relation to victim identifiability and the number of victims in need. In three studies, participants (N = 4206) either underwent the unit asking intervention, in which they indicated a hypothetical amount to one victim before answering how much to donate to a group of victims, or no intervention. In the first two studies, participants also saw a charity appeal that either included an identified victim – with varying levels of identifiability – or not. In the third study, participants saw an appeal that either included the picture of one or five children, and involved providing help to either 20 or 200 children. People in control conditions were unaffected by whether the charity appeal included an identified victim or not, and they did not donate more when more victims were in need. However, participants in the unit asking conditions donated more when more victims were in need and donated more regardless of the level of identifiability. In conclusion, this thesis shows that people’s donation decisions are affected to different extents by the information in the charity appeal related to identifiability, numbers in need, and age – which can result in unequal valuations of lives. This thesis also shows that interventions, especially the unit asking method, can make valuations of lives more equal. Taken together, this thesis contributes to a broader understanding of how people make decisions regarding charity and how interventions can impact such decision-making processes.