Article
Social class shapes donation allocation preferences
Fecha
2021Autor
Vieites, Yan
Goldszmidt, Rafael Guilherme Burstein
Andrade, Eduardo Bittencourt
Institución
Resumen
When considering a charitable act, consumers must often decide on how to allocate their resources across a multitude of possible causes. This article assesses how the relative “urgency” of the causes under consideration (i.e., how critical to human survival the causes are) shapes preferences for specific causes among higher and lower social class consumers. Across a series of studies in a highly unequal socioeconomic environment (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), we demonstrate that lower-class consumers prefer to donate to urgent causes (e.g., alleviating hunger) compared to non-urgent causes (e.g., encouraging cultural activities), whereas the effect reverses among higher-class consumers.