Consumer guilt and philanthropy

Abstract

Consumer guilt is a negative emotional state resulting from a consumer decision violating the consumers norms or values and it causes the consumer to experience a low self-esteem. Therefore, guilt induces consumers to make up for the violation of their norms by engaging in philanthropic activities. The present study fills a gap in the literature by examining the underlying psychological drivers of guilt which contribute towards the generation of donor behaviour. As such, the current research studies the impact of different norms on different donation sizes through three states of guilt as well as their subsequent consequences. Further, the present research attempts to extend the well established Norm Activation Model by addition of three states of guilt as a mediating variable between personal norms and donor behaviour. For the purpose of study, data were collected from 370 respondents using questionnaire and analysed using CFA-SEM. Lastly, the current research examines the usages of guilt appeals on NGO websites using the Content Analysis Technique. The findings of present study reveal that it is the injunctive social norms which positively impact three types of guilt whereas descriptive social norms negatively impact guilt. The findings with respect to size of donations reveal that small sized donations are not caused by guilt while medium sized donations are caused by reactive guilt and large sized donations are caused by anticipatory guilt. Further, the results of Norm Activation Model do not support the inclusion of three types of guilt within the model. On examination of guilt appeals on NGO websites, it is revealed that more than half the NGO websites use guilt as an appeal for raising donations where the most used appeal is existential guilt appeal. newline