Online Fundraising, Self-Image, and the Long-Term Impact of Ask Avoidance

We provide the first field evidence for the role of pure self-image, independent of social image, in charitable giving. In an online fundraising campaign for a social youth project run on an opera ticket booking platform we document how individ-uals engage in self-deception to preserve their self-image. In addition, we provide evidence on stark adverse long-run effects of the fundraising campaign for ticket sales. “Avoiding the ask,” opera customers who faced more insistent online fund-raising buy fewer tickets in the following season. Our results suggest that fund-raising management should not decide in isolation about their campaigns, even if very successful. Rather broader operational concerns have to be considered.

• Publication year

  2020

• Venue

  Management Sciences

• Publication date

  2020-02-01

• Fields of study

  Computer Science, Sociology, Business, Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.5282/ubm/epub.58098
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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