Abstract
As fundraising becomes more competitive, charitable organizations increasingly invest in maximizing the effectiveness of their appeals. The current study shows that, all else being equal, a campaign photo portraying victims who do not seem to be engaged in any form of self-help will elicit lower donations compared with a photo that triggers the perception that victims are taking action to address their circumstances. Campaigns may be more successful if they use images that do not show victims rather than images of victims not engaged in self-help.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 385-396 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| Journal | Journal of Advertising Research |
| Volume | 62 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 1 Dec 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2022, World Advertising Research Center. All rights reserved.
Funding
Data. The data for this study were collected from GlobalGiving.org, an online crowdfunding platform that enables potential donors to donate money to various charity projects around the world. The dataset used in the current research consisted of information that was systematically downloaded from 200 charity-giving projects that were launched on the platform between December 2018 and December 2019. These projects were collectively funded by 5,031 donors. For each project, the data included the following information on a particular day: the project’s category (see Appendix A); funding goal (in U.S. dollars); the sum of donations achieved (in U.S. dollars); project duration (the number of months that had passed since the project’s launch); number of donors; portion of the funding goal achieved; average donation per month; average donation per donor; and, of particular importance, the main featured image—the first picture presented on the project page.