Nudging Charity: How Digital Nudges Influence Online Prosocial Behaviors

Charitable giving represents a sizeable part of the American economy and occurs increasingly online. Default nudges, which are easily implemented online, have been shown to impact individual decisions about whether and how much to donate to charity and therefore have the potential to influence decisions regarding the hundreds of billions of dollars donated every year. However, these results suffer from a curvilinear effect such that while some decision-makers donate more, others abstain or donate less and total donations are not increased. We posit that this occurs because defaults can communicate many different meanings, and their perceived meaning changes their role in the decision-making process. We expand social value orientation (SVO) theory by theorizing that defaults communicating norms moderate the relationship between individuals’ goals for self-presentation and their SVOs, especially when accompanied by real-time data reflecting prosocial behavior of others. Our results from an online experiment will contribute an understanding of the mechanisms by which default nudges affect online decision-making and practical recommendations for website design for prosocial markets