Do You Like What You See? How Nonprofit Campaigns With Output, Outcome, and Impact Effectiveness Indicators Influence Charitable Behavior

Abstract

This study contributes to recent discussions on voluntary disclosure as a signaling approach among nonprofit organizations and its effects on stakeholders’ decision-making. Focusing on nonprofit program effectiveness, we test how nonprofit campaigns providing information on three effectiveness indicators—outputs, outcomes, and impacts (as part of the logic framework)—influence donation and lending behavior. An online survey experiment ( N = 271) reveals that donors value outcome and impact indicators more than output information, without any differences between the two. Moreover, the three indicators have no statistical influences on lending behavior. We also consider the moderating role of reflective decision-making and find no influence on either donation or lending behavior.