Recovery Or Improvement? The Matching Effect Of The Emphasis Of Charitable Appeal Information And The Perceived Issue Controllability

With the rapid development of modern philanthropy in China,topics and research related to philanthropy have attracted more and more attention from the society and the public.How to increase the willingness of personal charitable donations is an important issue facing relevant departments and research institutions.As an important point in the fundraising process,charitable appeal information directly faces potential donors and plays an important role in influencing people's donation behavior.However,previous studies on the categories of charitable appeal information were relatively single,and most of them differentiated charitable appeal from egoism/altruism based on content,or distinguished them from the perspective of positive/negative based on framing effect.In fact,the altruism and positive-framing charitable appeal(that is,highlighting that charitable donations could bring benefits to others)was the most common type of charitable appeal in real life,and altruism could be expressed in different ways,but previous research lacked more detailed distinction.In addition,in real life,various platforms and help-seekers “conventionally” designed different types of charitable appeal information with emphasis on key points based on the differences in the attributes of charitable donation projects(such as natural disasters or education funding)when releasing fundraising information in order to improve people's willingness to donate,but the effect was still lacking theoretical basis.Based on observations in real life and existing research,this research carried out a new classification of charitable appeal information,and then explored how the interaction between charitable appeal information and the controllability of the perceived issue controllability affects people's willingness to donate through regulatory focus.The study provided empirical support for the above classification,effects and internal mechanisms through 6 experiments.Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 showed that people could naturally distinguish and understand the difference in the charity appeal information of reconstruction and improvement.Experiment 2 further showed that people believed the difference between the two the charity appeals lied in the emphasis on reducing losses and increasing gain.In Experiment 3,we found that people paid more attention to reducing losses when facing uncontrollable situations(vs.controllable),and pay more attention to increasing gains when facing controllable situations(vs.uncontrollable).Experiment 4A/4B/4C further tested the basic interaction effect by manipulating the charity appeal information and the perceived issue controllability of the cause of the dilemma.Together with previous experiments,it explained the mechanism of this effect,that is,when the help-seeker was in a dilemma caused by uncontrollable reasons(vs.controllable reasons),which activated people's attention to reducing losses,while the “restoration/reconstruction” charity appeal(vs.“improvement/enhancement”)placed more emphasis on helping the seeker to reduce losses.When the help-seeker was in a dilemma caused by controllable causes(vs.uncontrollable causes),it activated people's attention to increasing gains,and the“improvement/enhancement” charity appeal(vs.“recovery/reconstruction”)placed more emphasis on helping the seeker to increase gains.There was a matching effect of“recovery-uncontrollable” and “improvement-controllable” between charity appeal information and the perceived issue controllability of the cause of the dilemma.This kind of matching enhances people's willingness to donate.This study enriched the classification research of charity appeal information,and provided a theoretical explanation of the internal mechanism for common phenomena in life and fundraising strategies commonly used by charitable organizations.In addition,this study had certain practical implications for charitable organizations and help-seekers to design more reasonable and effective charitable appeal and enhance the persuasive effect.