A study by the Chinese University of Hong Kong suggests that looks maybe an overrated factor in philanthropic fundraising, sometimes even causing a negative effect.
In a study entitled «Beauty, Gender and Online Charitable Giving», CUHK explored the effects of attractiveness to the donor willingness of males and females.
For male recipients, attractiveness did not play a significant role in affecting the number of male or female donors. For female recipients, attractiveness not only boosted male donor figures but also had an opposite effect on female donors. Could the attractiveness of females actually repel female donors and cause a counterproductive fundraising effect?
All About the Cause
In order to isolate whether or not female attractiveness had a blanket negative effect on female donors, CUHK also gathered data from a separate simulation that added the additional factor of «neediness» or how urgent the need was to receive funds immediately. One of the hypothetical cases presented to donors was of a woman who was diagnosed with a brain tumor soon after recovering from breast cancer.
While men maintained consistency and continued donating more when the aforementioned case was paired with an attractive female donor, women responded at similar levels indicating that when the issue was urgent, attractiveness played little to no role for females.
Attractive Women and Less Urgent Causes
Such results suggest that women are neither lured by binary thinking about beauty nor are they immune to its effect: they simply have a more nuanced world view about it than men, at least when it comes to donations. Only in the cases where the cause is not considered significantly urgent does female attractiveness have an opposite effect.
«We show that personal liking is a key motivator for men in donation decisions, whereas the perception of neediness motivates female donors,» said CUHK professor Kim Keongtae, one of the authors of the report.
Male Instinct
In contrast, the studies suggest that attractiveness has a fairly simplistic effect on men and consistently boosts fundraising outcomes. Specifically, one standard deviation increase in the attractiveness score of female recipients increased the number of male donors by an average of 2.9 percent.
«Men are more willing to donate to attractive women because of an instinctive preference for beauty,» says CUHK professor Hong Ying-Yi.
The study was based on donation activity data from online non-profit platform Kiva, artificial intelligence for face analytics and separate simulated scenarios. It also admitted to potential biases such as the facial resemblance between donors and receipts or the self-esteem of the donor.
