On Angels and Demons: How to Encourage Good and Discourage Bad Behavior

In the first paper (“Empowering Donors. How to increase fundraising efficiency via coupling and unpacking”) we study what motivates donors to be generous. We explore the effects of coupling (i.e., associating benefits with payments) and unpacking (i.e., presenting choice options as separate vs. grouped) in a large field experiment. We find that coupling and unpacking increases donation likelihood as well as donation amount. Providing donors with a sense of agency positively affects the total amount of money that is contributed to the charity. In the second paper (“Resting on Imaginary Laurels: A Self-Concept Maintenance Perspective of Goal-Setting”) we study how consumers set goal-levels. For instance, why do they decide to work out 4 instead of 8 times a month? We propose that this decision is driven by two opposing motives: feeling good about oneself (i.e., setting high goals) versus not expending too much effort (i.e., setting low goals). We argue that consumers set lower goal levels to the extent that they can maintain a favorable self-concept. Framing the goal setting process in terms of how many goal-directed behaviors to undertake (inclusion frame) as compared to how many to skip (exclusion frame) allows for a self-serving bias – a tendency to reach favorable self-conclusions. As a consequence, consumers can set lower goals in the inclusion frame and still maintain a favorable self-concept.