Impact Matters for Giving at Checkout

We conducted two experiments on PayPal’s Give at Checkout feature to learn about the effect of 1) information about charity outcomes on donations, and 2) exposure to these point-of-sale microgiving requests on subsequent giving. In this “impulsive” giving context, quantifying the charity’s outcome generates positive treatment effects, larger than those for a narrative. Third-party validation can decrease giving when added to the quantified outcome treatment, and has at most small effects relative to no information. The second experiment finds neither crowd-in (e.g., via habit formation) nor crowd-out (e.g., via budgeting) from these microgiving requests on later donation behavior.