It Is Too Early to Say "Thank You": Pre-Action Appreciation Backlashes Prosocial Behaviors

Description

Prosocial behavior (i.e., charitable giving, voluntary activities, and green consumption) iscritical for social well-being and human development. As such, non-profit philanthropic entities havean outsize share in generating prosocial behavior. According to the National Center for CharitableStatistics (2020), there are about 1.54 million non-profit organizations registered in the United States(US). These organizations have made significant and far-reaching impacts on key societal issues, suchas helping reduce poverty, providing education for children in remote areas, improving sanitaryconditions, and curing diseases, among others. Though these non-profit philanthropic organizationsplay an important role in the well-being of overall society, their support is derived from individuals’engagement in prosocial behavior. Indeed, individual donors represent more than 70% of charitablegiving in the US (Giving USA Foundation 2016). Plus, people spend an average of 52 hours per yearvolunteering their time in prosocial activities in the US (Nonprofit Source 2022).Given major contributions (e.g., money, time, effort) individuals make when engaging inprosocial behavior, many parties (e.g., charities, government) seek to understand the motivation ofpeople’s prosocial behavior and avoid factors that might decrease their munificence. A commonapproach charitable non-profit organizations use to encourage individuals to engage in long-termprosocial behavior is to express their appreciation to donors. Such gratitude enhances donors’ feelingsof self-efficacy and social worth. This is because, as favorable feedback, it tells benefactors that theirgoodness is indeed helping others and is valued by others (Grant and Gino 2010). Note that, thesepositive outcomes from appreciation extended to donors has been presumably built on the premisethat donors receive appreciation after they have done something good for others.Though appreciation conceptually is considered a consequence of or positive feedback forprosocial behavior, it is sometimes used an antecedent to promote prosocial behaviors. That is, peoplemay receive appreciation from beneficiaries before they decide whether to help, which we refer to aspre-action appreciation. For example, charitable giving campaigns generally use the words “thankyou for your donation” when appealing to prospective donors prior to making their donation decision(e.g., https://www.graceashleyscasnyfoundation.org/donate/). Although use of post-actionappreciation has been established to sustain prosocial behavior (Grant and Gino 2010), we argue thatpre-action appreciation may well backfire and decrease prosocial behavior (i.e., donating here).The preceding prediction is built on the nature of appreciation and its corresponding implicitmeaning of pre-action appreciation formed by associated learning (Shanks 1995). People tend toembed cognitively a link between two things (e.g., words, pictures) if they always appear together;once that association is formed, the appearance of one element will activate the other one in people’smind (Smith 1998). In our research, the appearance of appreciation before prosocial behavior formsan association between these two elements in which the appearance of one is expected to beaccompanied by another. Through activation of this association, pre-action appreciation (i.e., onenode in the link) contains implicit meaning for receivers inferring that they should engage in prosocialbehavior (i.e., the other node in the link). However, such implicit meaning with the presumption ofprosocial engagement will threaten people’s sense of autonomy, and the threatened autonomy willdecrease their prosocial behavior (Simpson and White 2017). Therefore, we argue that pre-actionappreciation will ironically reduce individuals’ willingness to undertake prosocial behavior that isjointly caused by its implicit meaning and the need for autonomy in prosocial engagement. If thispresupposition is true, then it begs the following question: Should not charities rethink their use ofpre-action appreciation given the possibility that it could reduce benefactors’ prosocial behavior?This research adds to advancing research about how linguistic elements shape and influenceconsumers’ behaviors and offers significant theoretical and practical contributions in severaldimensions. First, the proposed study can contribute to the stream of research about prosocialbehavior. Though prior research has identified various factors that influence prosocial behavior, thecurrent work identifies a prevalent approach used in prosocial campaigns (i.e., pre-actionappreciation) and uncovers its counterintuitive and adverse effects on charitable giving behavior.Second, the current empiricism can contribute to the stream of literature investigating “appreciation”by illustrating the contrasting effects of appreciation when it is given before and after the occurrenceof charitable behavior. Third, the expected outcomes of our proposed undertaking can have importantmanagerial implications by alerting practitioners to avoid efforts that diminish the effectiveness oftheir fundraising campaign programs vis-a-vis prosocial behavior, as well as of their routine businessconversations, public policy or even daily communication in general.