Charities often use incentives to increase prosocial action. However, charities sometimes downplay these incentives in their messaging (pilot study), possibly to avoid demotivating donors. We challenge this strategy, examining whether increasing the salience of incentives for prosocial action can in fact motivate charitable behavior. Three controlled experiments ( N = 2,203 adults) and a field study with an alumni-donation campaign ( N = 22,468 adults) found that more (vs. less) salient incentives are more effective at increasing prosocial behavior when prosocial motivation is low (vs. high). This is because more (vs. less) salient incentives increase relative consideration of self-interest (vs. other-regarding) benefits, which is a stronger driver of behavior at low (vs. high) levels of prosocial motivation. By identifying that prosocial motivation moderates the effect of incentive salience on charitable behavior, and by detailing the underlying mechanism, we advance theory and practice on incentive salience, motivation, and charitable giving.

中文翻译：

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激励显着性和亲社会动机对亲社会行为的交互作用

慈善机构经常利用激励措施来增加亲社会行动。然而，慈善机构有时会在其信息传递中淡化这些激励措施（试点研究），可能是为了避免削弱捐赠者的积极性。我们对这一策略提出挑战，研究增加对亲社会行动的激励是否确实能够激发慈善行为。三项对照实验（N = 2,203 名成人）和一项校友捐赠活动现场研究（N = 22,468 名成人）发现，当亲社会动机较低（相对于低水平）时，更多（与更少）的显着激励措施可以更有效地增加亲社会行为。高的）。这是因为更多（相对于更少）的显着激励增加了对自身利益（相对于其他利益）利益的相对考虑，这是低（相对于高）亲社会动机水平下行为的更强驱动力。通过确定亲社会动机调节激励显着性对慈善行为的影响，并详细说明其潜在机制，我们推进了激励显着性、动机和慈善捐赠的理论和实践。