Why Do-Good Gifts May Miss the Mark

It’s mid-December. You’re sitting at your desk and a new message hits your inbox with the subject line: “A donation has been made on your behalf to…” You feel grateful, of course, but also a little dissatisfied for some reason. This doesn’t quite feel like a gift. 

The ambivalent reaction to a charitable or “prosocial” gift — a cash donation on one’s behalf to a food bank, the symbolic adoption of a species at risk — is not unusual, even as such gifts become increasingly popular. 

Ekin Ok, an assistant professor of marketing at Smith School of Business, credits the rise of prosocial gift-giving to advances in technology that make it a more accessible option. As well, a growing number of people value social responsibility and want it reflected in their consumption decisions. That extends to their gifts. Nearly half of Canadians say they would prefer to receive charitable gifts over material items. 

That may be great news for professionals who are on the hunt for a gift for a colleague or client, and a welcome opportunity for charitable organizations. But does it deliver the intended warm glow to the person on the receiving end? 

The importance of control 

Ok and fellow researchers Rishad Habib (Toronto Metropolitan University) and Karl Aquino (University of British Columbia) are trying to answer that question. 

The literature on prosocial gift-giving suggests recipients may not always appreciate such gifts as much as givers anticipate. This is particularly true when it comes to gift recipients with whom they do not have a close relationship.

It is generally assumed that the recipient will feel a sense of satisfaction about contributing to something good, Ok explains. Here’s the catch: “We know from research that to feel this moral satisfaction, this feeling of having done good, we need to feel some agency behind the decision.” 

In prosocial gift-giving, gift recipients sometimes are not the ones deciding on the cause or the charity that receives the donation. “Because this type of gift-giving presents limited opportunities for recipients to feel agency behind the donation decision,” says Ok, “our ongoing research provides some preliminary evidence that recipients don’t actually feel that happy about it, especially if they haven’t explicitly asked for this type of a gift or if they haven’t previously communicated their genuine interest in the cause that the donation supports.” 

By “happy,” Ok means “the moral kind of happiness that we often experience after doing something at a cost to ourselves for the benefit of others.” 

Prosocial gift-giving can also have unintended negative effects on charities receiving the donations. While there are benefits from that initial donation, a prosocial gift may not inspire a strong relationship between the gift recipient and the charitable organization. “In some cases, it may even reduce gift recipients’ future willingness to donate to the organization,” Ok says. 

How to give a prosocial gift 

Is there a way to make prosocial gift-giving a win-win-win? 

Ok speculates that, given what is known from current research, if gift-givers were to choose an organization that made the recipient feel as if they inspired the choice, that could thwart negative effects resulting from a lack of agency in the decision-making process.

“Let’s say I’m crazy about dogs. I talk about dogs all the time and everyone who knows me knows that I love dogs,” Ok says. “If a friend chose an animal rescue organization to donate to on my behalf without my prior knowledge, I would still feel somewhat responsible for having inspired that choice.” 

Another option for charitable organizations is to put more power into the hands of the gift recipient. Charities can do this by allowing gift recipients to determine how the donation is used. 

Ok says one of their studies shows that allowing the recipients to direct the gift to a specific area, fund, program or initiative will make them feel more involved in the process and increase their sense of moral satisfaction. 

“The idea of agency, or feeling personally responsible, is important when it comes to moral decisions like this,” says Ok, “because we know one of the reasons people act charitably is to help others, but it also helps us feel good about ourselves.”