Science1 publisher3 min readPublished
Climate anger, hope and compassion barely moved donations when the money was the participant's own
More than 2,000 people in Norway and Poland read stories written to make them angry, compassionate or hopeful about climate change, then got the chance to hand over the 200 kroner or 20 zloty they had just been paid.
The Scientist · Science desk
What happened
- Every participant was paid 200 kroner or 20 zloty, then read short stories written to trigger anger, compassion or hope, before being offered the chance to give that fee to WWF.
- The Norwegian and Polish samples together came to more than 2,000 people, and the study is published in the journal Scientific Reports.
- WWF in Norway, which received the donations, says through a senior partnerships adviser that it knowingly uses anger, compassion and hope in fundraising, often followed by a call to action.
Compiled by The ScientistSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- constraint An appeal that reliably raises stated intention cannot be assumed to raise revenue, so a campaign evaluated on intent scores has left the part that funds the work unmeasured.
- capability Paying the fee first and then offering an effort route to the same donation gives researchers a costly-choice measure that a questionnaire cannot reach, and it distinguishes unwillingness from inability to spare the cash.
- decision Charities that use these three emotions as standing policy have a reason to test their creative on money actually given, in a design where the audience gives something up.
The unusual part of this experiment is the second option. Alongside the chance to give away their fee, participants could work through sheets of pattern-finding puzzles, and the researchers paid WWF in proportion to how much they got through [5]. "We also gave them another option, to work through a number of pretty boring sheets, where they had to find patterns. In return, we, the organizers, donated on their behalf. The more they did, the more we donated," Klöckner said [5]. phys.org describes this "real impact task" as what sets the study apart from other research in the field [23].
That matters because it separates two reasons for keeping the cash. A participant who valued the 200 kroner could still cause a donation by spending time instead [5]. The reported result covers behaviour generally: the number of participants whose behaviour changed with the emotional content they read was negligible at best [6]. On money specifically, Klöckner said "very few" participants "gave any more money because of the emotions they had been exposed to, compared with people who did not read the stories" [7].
The sample was more than 2,000 people in Norway and Poland [1]. Split evenly between the two countries and across three emotion conditions plus a group that read no story, that comes to roughly 250 participants per cell [21]. A null at that size argues against a large effect on giving and leaves a small one in play [21]. The phys.org report does not include the donation totals, the per-condition figures or a country breakdown [20].
The two halves of the comparison come from different places. The stronger-intentions result is prior work, which Klöckner summarised: "We knew already that when people are angry, they are more motivated and have stronger intentions" [11]. In that literature, angry people are more likely to want climate criminals held to account, and compassionate people to support victims [12]. "In this recent study, we wanted to put people's intentions to the test," he said [10].
His group has been here before, from the other direction. In a large household energy trial, Klöckner said, "we found our interventions actually reduced energy consumption, but they didn't change people's psychological mindsets" [14]. "The eventual energy saving had very little to do with the individuals' intention to do it," he said [15].
What the experiment measured was a one-time gift from paid participants who had just met the cause. WWF Norway's fundraising runs on a longer clock. Denise Kohn, senior corporate advisor for partnerships at WWF in Norway, said the organisation knowingly uses anger, compassion and hope, often followed by a call to action [16], and that "we know that our monthly donors support us for an average of five to six years" [17]. She also said WWF has "never been particularly successful in fundraising on climate alone" [19].
What to watch
- The Scientific Reports paper's per-condition donation rates and its results for the effort task, neither of which the phys.org account includes.
- Whether the Norwegian and Polish samples behaved differently, given the different fee currencies and amounts.
- Whether a fundraiser replicates the design with existing monthly donors instead of paid experimental participants.