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Abstract
Why people donate to charity or how people may be persuaded to donate to charity is a widely studied topic. What happens after people donated to charity, however, is largely understudied. On the one hand, people may be motivated to behave morally in subsequent decisions because of consistency concerns. On the other hand, people may feel licensed to behave less morally in subsequent decisions. In a quasi-experimental field study, we show that donating to charity may have a dark side to it, as it negatively affects subsequent, seemingly unrelated moral behavior. Specifically, our study shows the licensing effect in a real-world setting, as we find that people who donated to charity subsequently show lower intentions to be environmentally friendly.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Chung Hao Dang, Dieke Folkeringa, Hanneke Hendriks, Rob Jansen, Rens Smulders, and Karlijn Wilbers for their help with collecting the data. Furthermore, we would like to thank the associate editor (Gwen Wittenbaum) and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. In line with other research, we find that environmental self-identity and environmental intentions are strongly correlated (Van der Werff, Steg, & Keizer, Citation2013a). However, it is important to note that these are two related but distinct concepts, both conceptually and statistically. Previous research shows that environmental self-identity is a predictor of environmental intentions (Fielding et al., Citation2008; Nigbur et al., Citation2010; Sparks & Shepherd, Citation1992; Van der Werff, Steg, & Keizer, Citation2013b). Furthermore, one’s self-identity can be described as the way people see themselves and the labels they use to describe themselves (Cook, Kerr, & Moore, Citation2002), whereas intention refers to the probability that one performs a certain behavior (Fishbein & Ajzen, Citation1975). Lastly, a Principal Component Analysis (Oblimin) showed that environmental self-identity and environmental intentions are two distinct concepts (see Table ).
2. Because of the high correlation between city and donating yes/no, r = .597, p < .001 (see Table ), city could be seen as a proxy for donating behavior. Therefore, we conducted an extra multiple regression analysis with city as a predictor instead of using a self-report measure (donated yes/no) and age, surveyor, how often participants typically donate, and environmental self-identity as covariates. The results showed that participants approached in the Serious Request city where the festivities were going were less likely to report environmental intentions (M = 4.09, SD = .94) than people approached in the other city (M = 4.52, SD = .96), F(2, 256) = 34.31, p < .001, R2 = .41, β = –.17, t(83) = –3.23, p = .001.