The effect of evidence in nonprofit donation requests: how does mindset play a role?

ABSTRACT The use of evidence in bolstering message believability has been shown in the literature. However, more work is needed to understand the effect of evidence in the monetary donation context for nonprofit organizations. This paper aims to partially close the knowledge gap in this area by (i) comparing the effectiveness of statistical and narrative donation messages on message believability, (ii) investigating the moderating effect of abstract and concrete mindset on the relationship between message type and believability, and (iii) analyzing the resulting effect on subsequent donation intentions. Our findings show that there is no difference in the effect of statistical versus narrative messages on message believability when the recipient of the message is in abstract mindset. However, when the recipient is in concrete mindset, statistical messages lead to stronger believability perceptions. Furthermore, higher believability is found to increase individual monetary donation intentions.