Beauty, Gender, and Charitable Giving: Men donors will perceive attractive women as more likeable & deserving, while women donors will perceive attractive women as less needy & less deserving

Park, Jooyoung and Kim, Keongtae and Hong, Ying-Yi, Beauty, Gender, and Charitable Giving (June 18, 2019). SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3405823

Abstract: The authors retrieve data from a prosocial lending platform and conduct four experiments to examine the effects of facial attractiveness on charitable giving. The data show that facial attractiveness of women rather than men recipients more strongly affects donations and that donor gender determines whether beauty has positive or negative effects on charitable giving. Men donors will perceive attractive women as more likeable and deserving, while women donors will perceive attractive women as less needy and less deserving. The study highlights the importance of donor gender in understanding the impact of recipient attractiveness. The findings enhance understandings of beauty effects especially in the context of charitable giving and provide practical implications for individual recipients, charities and platform operators in sharing recipient images.

Keywords: attractiveness, beauty, charitable giving, crowdfunding, gender