The Charity Beauty Premium: Satisfying Donors’ “Want” versus “Should” Desires

Abstract

Despite widespread conviction that neediness should be a top priority for charitable giving, this research documents a “charity beauty premium” in which donors often choose beautiful, but less needy, charity recipients instead. The authors propose that donors hold simultaneous yet incongruent preferences of wanting to support beautiful recipients (who tend to be judged as less needy), but believing they should support needy recipients. The authors also posit that preferences for beautiful recipients are most likely to emerge when decisions are intuitive, whereas preferences for needy recipients are most likely to emerge when decisions are deliberative. These propositions are tested in several ways. First, when a beautiful recipient is included in basic choice sets, this recipient becomes the most popular option and increases donor satisfaction. Second, heightening deliberation steers choices away from beautiful recipients and toward needier ones. Third, donors explicitly state that they “want” to give to beautiful recipients but “should” give to less beautiful, needier ones. Taken together, these findings reconcile and extend previous and sometimes conflicting results about beauty and generosity.