Beauty, Gender, and Online Charitable Giving

The authors analyze data from a donation-based crowdfunding platform and conduct four experiments to examine effects of facial attractiveness on online charitable giving. Results show that facial attractiveness of recipients affects charitable giving only toward female recipients but not toward male recipients. Importantly, donor gender affects the direction of responses to facial attractiveness of recipients: men tend to donate more to attractive than unattractive female Results further demonstrate different mechanisms of attractiveness effects for male versus female donors: male donors are more willing to donate to attractive female recipients because of an instinctive preference for beauty. By contrast, female donors are less willing to donate to attractive female recipients because they are perceived to be less needy. By illuminating beauty effects in the context of online charitable giving, the findings provide practical implications for charities, individual recipients, and platform operators, especially regarding the disclosure of recipients’ facial images.