Consumers view time-donations as morally better than money-donations because they perceive time-donations as signaling greater emotional investment in the cause & therefore better moral character

Johnson, Samuel G. B., and Seo Y. Park. 2019. “Moral Signaling Through Donations of Money and Time.” PsyArXiv. September 23. doi:10.31234/osf.io/tg9xs

Abstract: Prosocial acts typically take the form of time- or money-donations. Do third-parties differ in how they evaluate these different kinds of donations? Here, we show that consumers view time-donations as more morally praiseworthy than money-donations, even when the resource investment is comparable. This moral preference occurs because consumers perceive time-donations as signaling greater emotional investment in the cause and therefore better moral character; this occurs despite consumers’ belief that time-donations are less effective than money-donations (Study 1). The more signaling power of time-donations has downstream implications for interpersonal attractiveness in a dating context (Study 2) and for donor decision-making (Study 3). Moreover, donors who are prompted with an affiliation rather (versus dominance) goal are likelier to favor time-donations (Study 3). However, reframing money-donations in terms of time (e.g., donating a week’s salary) reduced and even reversed these effects (Study 4). These results support theories of prosociality that place reputation-signaling as a key motivator of consumers’ moral behavior. We discuss implications for the charity market and for social movements, such as effective altruism, that seek to maximize the social benefit of consumers’ altruistic acts.