People commonly possess multiple, differentially-valued resources they can use to benefit those in need: contributing money, volunteering time, donating unwanted possessions, posting on social media to raise awareness, and more. But the majority of experimental work on generosity and helping behavior has studied giving when only a single valuable resource is available to give. This project considers: when people have multiple, differentially-valued resources to use to benefit a dependent other, which resources will they use to help, and how much? Results from an experiment show, first, that generosity is higher with lower-value resources. More importantly, when multiple, differentially-valued resources are available to use to benefit others, helping is higher than when a single resource is available, all else equal. This is because when multiple resources are available, people are especially willing to give away their relatively lower-value resources. Put differently, when people can benefit others using multiple resources, they are more likely to consider how they should help, rather than whether they should.

人们通常会拥有多种价值不一的资源，可以用来使有需要的人受益：捐款，志愿服务时间，捐赠多余的财产，在社交媒体上发布信息以提高知名度等等。但是，关于宽容和帮助行为的大多数实验工作都研究了只有一个有价值的资源可供奉献时的奉献。该项目考虑：当人们拥有多种具有不同价值的资源来使受扶养的他人受益时，他们将使用哪些资源以及提供多少资源？实验结果表明，首先，低价值资源的慷慨性更高。更重要的是，当有多个具有不同价值的资源可用于使他人受益时，与其他资源相同时，帮助要比单个资源可用时要高。这是因为当有多种资源可用时，人们特别愿意放弃其相对较低价值的资源。换句话说，当人们可以使用多种资源使他人受益时，他们更有可能考虑应该如何提供帮助，而不是是否应该提供帮助。