Sharing really is caring: Why ‘virtue signaling’ might actually be good

EVANSTON, Ill. --- People are often reluctant to publicly share that they donate to charity, because doing so can seem self-congratulatory.

But when people do talk about their giving, they increase the likelihood that others in their networks will learn about the organization and donate too, potentially starting a “chain reaction” that makes a bigger difference than one person can make alone.

To reconcile this conundrum — giving is good, but sharing is uncomfortable — one simple approach might be reminding donors after they give that they can have an even greater impact by sharing, according to new research led by Ike Silver, assistant professor of marketing at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management.

In a field experiment with more than 77,000 participants, Silver and coauthor Deborah Small of Yale University found that a simple message (“your donation can start a chain reaction …”) reminding donors that sharing can further help the cause made a big difference.

Doing so boosted click-through rates on a link inviting them to share by 5.1%, boosted individual donors’ likelihood of recruiting at least one later donation by 12.4%, and boosted average recruited donations per participant by 16.6% relative to a control group that received the organization’s standard “please share” message, which solicits donors to share, but doesn’t explicitly cue them to consider that doing so is a net positive for the cause.

The study was published today, Aug. 8, 2023, in the journal Marketing Science.

“Charities need word of mouth just like any other business,” Silver said, noting that consumers tend to trust people in their networks more than advertisers. “By reframing talking about good behavior as something that is positive for the world — instead of something others will judge you for — we can change the way people think and act.” 

Silver and Small presented findings from one pilot study and two experiments. 

In the pilot study, the authors showed that people are more uncomfortable talking about their charitable contributions than they are sharing about almost any other comparable expense, be it a gym membership, a piece of art, or a new outfit.

Next, in a preregistered lab experiment, the authors asked participants to voluntarily report whatever came to mind when considering posting on social media about a charitable cause and found that a major reason for not sharing is the fear of looking boastful, or “virtue signaling,” which can have social consequences if it leads other people to think that someone is donating for the wrong reasons.

Cultural norms, after all, teach us that altruistic giving is best thought of as a private matter: monetary donations are often made anonymously, and those who brag about their good deeds are often thought of negatively.

Incidentally, Silver said, this might be the reason that charity “challenges” like the Ice Bucket Challenge and Movember exist. They ameliorate concerns about seeming sanctimonious or self-aggrandizing while still encouraging giving to a cause.

In any case, the authors suspected that worries about virtue-signaling might distract people from the good talking about the cause can do and hinder word-of-mouth as a result, Silver said.

So, in a large pre-registered field experiment in partnership with a major education nonprofit, they tested two sharing-solicitation messages among thousands of people who donated to charity in the fall of 2020. They found that when asking donors to share, explicitly emphasizing the social good case for sharing increased click-through and new donor recruitment.

Though the effect was small in absolute terms, moving the needle a few percentage points in terms of who shares a link can translate to big fundraising gains down the line.

“Truthfully, from the sharer’s perspective, if you really do care about a cause, it shouldn’t matter that some people might think that you're virtue-signaling,” Silver explained, because remaining silent is a dead end when it comes to generating downstream impact.

There were a few limitations of the study that could be explored in future research, Silver said.

First, the specific messages that people shared on social media weren’t visible to the research team for privacy reasons; the researchers instead tracked whether a donor clicked-through on the randomized sharing solicitation message and whether that donor later recruited others to give through a unique referral link. Understanding how people persuade others to give in their posts is an avenue for future study.

Second, it’s possible that more controversial charitable donations might have a different psychology associated with them. The charity used in the study (a children’s education support fund) wasn’t a cause that was politically charged. So, sharing a political donation or one associated with an advocacy group might be perceived differently.

Overall, though, Silver said that it’s clear from the research that sharing is a net positive in many cases, and that fundraisers can use this information to benefit their causes.

“The recommendation to charities is, if you're soliciting word of mouth, you should be highlighting how that positive word of mouth will impact your ability to serve the cause, because if you don't, even people who are quite generous to begin with will naturally start gravitating toward these worries about virtue signaling,” he said.

A final finding of the study underscores the value of encouraging sharing: The donors in the study who gave the most themselves were actually the least likely to share, but also the most effective at recruiting downstream donations when they did.

These donors were also the ones whose sharing was most strongly impacted by the experimental treatment. So, it might be especially important for charities to highlight the benefits of sharing with their “high value” donors to further their impact.