Do people avoid opportunities to donate? A natural field experiment on recycling and charitable causes.

 September 02, Monday , 2013

Why Giving People an Option to Be Charitable May Hurt Your Business .

Experiment :

After a store chain introduced new recycling machines that allowed consumers to donate their returned bottle-and-can deposits to charity, people started avoiding the machines !!

Results :

Whereas the amount of deposits returned by the old machines had been up to 3,026 Swedish krona higher per month than in the previous year, indicating a rising level of recycling, the amount returned by the new machines was up to 12,303 krona LOWER PER MONTH , year-over-year.

WHY ? Experiment results show that in the absence of pressure to donate, many people are reluctant to give to charity.

Research Courtesy : a team led by Mikael Knutsson of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. Whereas the amount of deposits returned by the old machine.

SOURCE: Do people avoid opportunities to donate? A natural field experiment on recycling and charitable causes.