Accentuate the Positive: Zicklin Prof Researches Effective Charity Appeals
February 25, 2025Diogo Hildebrand, PhD, admits to getting “emotional” when watching TV ads—but not in a good way.
“I was always bothered when ads for charities used images of people suffering, like the Save the Children appeals showing a starving child,” says Dr. Hildebrand, an assistant professor of marketing in the Allen G. Aaronson Department of Marketing and International Business. “It didn’t engage me or make me want to donate money—it made me want to avoid the issue altogether.”
Dr. Hildebrand with an example of an effective media image.
Hildebrand wondered if others felt the same way, and as an academic who studies consumer behavior, he had a unique opportunity to find out. With his co-authors and department colleagues Professor Sankar Sen, PhD, and Associate Professor Rhonda Hadi, PhD (now at the University of Oxford), Hildebrand devised a study of the effectiveness of eliciting positive versus negative emotions in advertisements for charities. The results of that research have now been published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science in a paper called “Showcase the smiles or the tears? How elicited perspectives determine optimal charity appeal content.”
When Hildebrand reviewed existing research on the subject, he found that many charities had moved away from what he terms “deprived beneficiary” appeals that depict suffering victims, in favor of “satiated beneficiary” appeals showing how victims improved after receiving help. He analyzed the top 100 nonprofit organizations in the U.S. and found that over 70 percent of them were using appeals that elicit positive rather than negative emotions. The charities, much like Hildebrand himself, assumed that when people feel positively, they’re more likely to want to help others.
But this hypothesis had never been tested. “The question of whether or when satiated-beneficiary appeals are more effective is still up for scholarly debate,” Hildebrand and his co-authors wrote. In an interview with Zicklin News, he added, “We propose that if you have potential donors put themselves in the shoes of potential beneficiaries having their needs met—what we deemed a ‘self’ perspective—this elicits positive emotions, which is an effective marketing strategy.”
They tested this idea in some novel ways. In one study, research participants donned virtual reality goggles and watched videos created by Oxfam International, a nonprofit that works to alleviate global poverty, that Hildebrand and his co-authors had edited to elicit either positive emotions (focusing on how donors could be part of the solutions that Oxfam provides) or negative ones (focusing on the deprivation experienced by the poor). Subjects received five British pounds, in the form of single pound notes, as a thank-you for participating. As they exited the study room, they passed a donation box prominently branded with Oxfam’s logo.
“They weren’t directly asked to donate, but we found that of the subjects who had viewed positive videos, about half of them put money in the Oxfam box,” Hildebrand says.
Another study collected data from GoFundMe, the popular crowdfunding platform that people use to raise money for various causes. After gathering information over several days on when and how much money was donated, Hildebrand and his colleagues used natural language processing to determine whether a particular cause elicited a “self” perspective (focusing on the potential donor) or an “other” perspective (focusing on the victim), and whether it elicited positive or negative emotions.
“We found that when paired with positive emotions, the more a cause asked people to imagine themselves in a situation, the more people donated to it,” Hildebrand says. “This was our overall conclusion: that eliciting positive feelings paired with a ‘self’ perspective is an effective strategy.”
Hildebrand hopes his research will help charities devise more effective giving appeals. And thanks to a presentation his co-author, Dr. Hadi, gave at the United Kingdom office of UNICEF, he may soon have access to more data to incorporate in his research.
“It may turn out that negative appeals are necessary in order to increase awareness of a particular cause,” Hildebrand adds, citing the example of a charity that increased sympathy—although not donations—for people with autism by emphasizing the difficulties autistic people encounter navigating the world. “So there is a nuanced discussion to be had about this issue.”