Encouraging greater levels of charitable donations can be accomplished by matching the emotion of the images used in appeals to the tone of the language and narration used, as shown in new research from Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University.

The study, conducted by Dr Alex Genevsky of RSM alongside PhD candidate Ting-Yi Lin and colleagues from the University of Michigan, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and Stanford University, aimed to gain a deeper understanding of what motivates people to donate to charitable causes.

To do so, the researchers provided a sample of potential donors with a real budget of $10 to either donate or keep for themselves, before exposing them to a variety of charitable requests, recording how much was given to each appeal.

The language used in the appeals varied to present participants with different emotional stances. For example, messages such as ‘Your donations can save thousands from death by starvation’, indicating a desperate reality to be fixed, or ‘Your donation can ensure a healthy future for thousands', pointing to a more hopeful future, were used. The accompanying imagery was also varied, with appeals displaying images of people looking either distressed in their circumstances or happy.

In the first part of the study, participants were exposed to donation requests featuring different combinations of emotional images and messages, and then were asked to decide how much they wanted to donate to each.

The results revealed that, when attempting to encourage greater levels of charitable giving, consistency mattered. When the emotional imagery matched the tone of language used in an appeal, participants were likely to donate a greater amount.

Furthermore, the effect was the same whether the appeals were consistent in negativity, urgent language with distressing images, or positivity, hopeful language with smiling faces.

Dr Genevsky says, “We really wanted to include experiments with real donations, not only hypothetical ones. When people know their choice will actually give money to charity, their behaviour carries more weight and the results are more reliable. We saw that, whether positive or negative, charitable appeals are most effective when their emotional elements matched in tone.”

To attempt to understand why consistency prompted a greater response from donors, the second experiment analysed the brain activity of participants via functional magnetic resonance imaging, whilst they viewed the appeals and made their charitable decisions.

The data from these scans revealed that charitable appeals that were consistent in imagery and language activated the nucleus accumbens, the reward centre of the brain, creating a positive emotional experience. This, in turn, prompted participants to make a greater level of donations.

The researchers state the findings hold important lessons for fundraisers and marketers. By taking simple steps to keep messaging consistent across language and visuals, organisations stand to gain a far better response from their audience, raising more money for their causes.

Furthermore, such adjustments do not require big budgets to be actioned, a point which Dr Genevsky highlights as crucial for the charity sector in particular, which often works under tight finances.

The researchers suggest the findings would also be applicable outside of the charity sector, suggesting professionals working across branding, advertising and communications for corporate activities such as CSR initiatives would be able to generate greater engagement from staff by employing the same techniques.