How Emotions drives Donations: A systematic literature review on emotional charity advertising

This study is the first attempt to organize and systematically review the literature on emotional advertising in the charity sector based on eliciting emotions to attract donors. In the face of increasing competition between different players, marketing and communication strategies become crucial to achieving the fundraising goals of each non-profit organization (NPO). When designing their advertising campaigns, NPOs often have to ponder how much they want to emphasize the negative consequences of not helping or the positive effects of helping (Erlandsson et al., 2018). In their advertising, NPOs frequently use emotional appeals to raise awareness of their cause (Septianto and Tjiptono, 2019). Often, negative emotional appeals like guilt (Hibbert et al., 2007), anger (Vitaglione and Barnett, 2003), and sadness (Small and Verrochi, 2009) are what motivate people to donate. According to various research approaches, prosocial messages have characteristics that support the dual goals of engagement and persuasion (Bartsch and Kloss, 2019). Studies on the effects of message factors in charity advertising have addressed, for example, emotional appeals (Basil et al. 2006; Bennett, 2015), and altruistic versus selfish appeals (Chang and Lee, 2011). Specifically, this research enriches the contributions of Wimer and Gross (2021), in which the authors focus on charity advertising in general. This study aims to narrow the field by concentrating on the impact in terms of donations of the positive or negative emotions elicited by the advertisement’s text, images, and colors. Methodology The research was conducted according to the systematic literature review method. This methodology was chosen to accurately answer the research questions, reduce potential bias in the selection of articles, and provide reliable results while attempting to minimize interpretive subjectivity (Moher et al., 2009). Initially, search keywords, target databases, and inclusion and exclusion criteria were selected. Keyword identification was the first step in the article collection phase (Tranfield et al., 2003). To find as many articles as possible that addressed the role of emotion in the effectiveness of charity advertising, the following search string was chosen: [emotion* in charity advertisement* or emotion in charity donation*]. All proposed document types were included in the analysis (i.e., articles, conference papers, conference proceedings, literature reviews) by applying the above string to their title, abstract, and keywords. Regarding the choice of databases, Web of Science (WoS) has been selected for its rigorous journal selection procedure based on publication standards, expert opinions, regular appearances, and the quality of citation data, making it the most reliable source (Garfield, 1990). Initially, the goal was to select all contributions that addressed the topics of interest (e.g., emotions, charity advertising, and donations). Then, all papers that analyzed donor behavior and people’s natural propensity to donate from a purely psychological perspective, not considering marketing and management aspects, were excluded. No exclusion criteria were applied based on the research approach (qualitative vs. quantitative) or period. This selection stemmed from a desire to observe trends in research approaches to this topic and to see if there was any change at the theoretical level over 15 years (2008-2013) due to the changing cultural context and digital transformation. Results We identified a total number of 126 publications on WoS. After initial screening based on title and abstract, 67 papers were included in the review. As a result, 67 documents have been retained and examined through text analysis to pinpoint the key ideas and viewpoints regarding the effectiveness of charity advertisements based on emotional cues. A secondary screening phase, consisting of the full-text reading, excluded articles. The final total amount of considered paper is 55. Regarding the annual research trend, a growing interest in emotional advertising can be observed during the reporting period. All the sources are journals belonging to the fields of advertising, nonprofit marketing, and psychology. These figures highlight a multidisciplinary interest in this topic. Finally, concerning the methodologies, all of the selected publications use quantitative approaches, and four of them make use of neuromarketing techniques including eye-tracking and electroencephalograms. Through a content analysis, the following fundamental themes have been identified: (i) the role of emotions elicited by advertising message framing, considering images and text; (ii) the role of emotions elicited by advertising message framing, considering only text; (iii) the role of emotions elicited by images and facial expressions in advertising visual content; (iv) the role of emotions elicited by advertising images’ colors; (v) the effectiveness of shocking charity campaigns. This study provides a comprehensive overview of the current state of the art on the effectiveness of positive or negative emotions in promoting charitable giving. In particular, it demonstrates how incorporating different combinations of emotions (positive and negative) into a single promotional message can increase charitable giving. Pride, hope, nostalgia, guilt, and compassion are the most stimulating emotions. However, the impact on donations of using positive or negative emotions in philanthropic advertising messages is not clear. Rather, it is evident that the context of reference and the goal of the organization influence the impact of the emotions triggered by the donor. The principle of congruence between the mission of the institution and the type of emotions elicited suggests that it would be beneficial to move from this broad overview to a more focused approach to identify which emotions are most effective depending on the different domains in which the organization operates (Goenka and Van Osselaer, 2019). Finally, the articles on the psychological impact of colors opened the possibility to explore how colors and emotions influence the success of fundraising appeals. Innovative methodologies based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) image analysis can offer great possibilities for the development of the present study. In addition, this study could be further extended by broadening the article collection using other databases.