Promoting Charitable Donations and Volunteering Through Nudge Tools From the Perspective of Behavioral Economics: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Few research has attempted to synthesize the effects of nudge tools in promoting prosocial behaviors through the lens of behavioral economics. This systematic review synthesizes empirical evidence of various types of nudges and their effectiveness in promoting charitable donations and volunteering. We identified 67 eligible studies with 117 experiments reporting eight nudge tools. We found that the studies focused mainly on three types of nudges (including reframing, referring to descriptive norms, and changing social consequences). We revealed that decreasing physical/cognitive effort, providing reminders, anchoring, and referring to descriptive norms effectively promote charitable donations; only reframing effectively promotes volunteering. Changing social consequences, connecting decisions to benefit or cost, and referring to descriptive norms are not effective in promoting volunteering. This review offers implications for practitioners implementing nudge tools in promoting charitable donations and volunteering. The data supporting the findings of this study are available in the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/kg836).