Date of Award
Spring 2015
Department
Psychology
First Advisor
Dr. John H. Yost
Abstract
Message framing is a strategy many campaign marketers use to make their donating recruitment more effective, and there is a growing interest in research regarding their effectiveness (Buda & Zhang, 2000; Chang 2007; Chang & Lee, 2009, 2010; Das et al., 2008). Several different types of message framing have been investigated in prior research on charitable giving including positive versus negative message-framing and egotistic versus altruistic message-framing. Prior research on applying Kahneman and Tversky‘s Prospect Theory (1981) on positive and negative message framing to charitable donations has indicated negative message-framing is more effective than positive message-framing for securing donations (Chang & Lee, 2009). Additionally, research on the egoistic versus altruistic framing effects has focused on gender differences, and has found that men respond more favorably egoistic message-appeals, whereas women respond more favorably to altruistic message-appeals (Hall, 2004; Shelley & Polonsky, 2002; as cited by Chang & Lee, 2011). Overall, altruistic appeals have been found to be more effective than egoistic appeals. This experiment attempted to replicate these findings and utilized a positive/negative frame manipulation and an altruistic/egoistic manipulation to test whether prior research for charitable giving is applicable to current undergraduate students‘ probability of donating to their university‘s scholarship fund. Contrary to previous research, the results found a significant effect for positive message-framing, as well as, a significant interaction between gender and altruistic framing with females being more likely to give than males when presented with an altruistic message-frame.
Recommended Citation
Fissinger, John P., "The Effect of Message Framing and Gender on the Likelihood of Donating Money to the John Carroll University 'Carroll Fund'" (2015). Senior Honors Projects. 84.
https://collected.jcu.edu/honorspapers/84
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