Testing how information about cost‐effectiveness, cause preferences, and geographic preferences interact to affect philanthropic giving

Abstract

The broad instrumental philanthropy movement advocates for considerations of cost‐effective impact in donation decisions. Within that broader movement, the effective altruism movement goes as far as to advocate for cause neutrality and geographic neutrality when prioritizing cost‐effectiveness in charity. We present a survey experiment that examined how information about cost‐effectiveness, cause area preferences, and geographic preferences interact to affect philanthropic giving. The experiment varied these three dimensions in a hypothetical giving situation and found that cost‐effectiveness information had the strongest influence on hypothetical giving. Participants gave most when presented with charities that were shown to be highly cost‐effective, local/domestic, and that matched their preferred cause area. Understanding how these three considerations interact to affect donors is important as donors continue to desire more information about the cost‐effective impact of their donation.