How can we foster habits of charitable giving? Here, we investigate the potential power of giving-by-proxy experiences, drawing inspiration from a growing trend in marketing and corporate social responsibility contexts in which organizations make charitable donations on behalf of employees or consumers. We create laboratory models of giving-by-proxy in workplace (Studies 1a-3) and consumer (Study 4) contexts. We then investigate how giving-by-proxy experiences (with varying amounts of autonomy) influence subsequent charitable behavior. Across five preregistered studies (N = 3255), we provide evidence that (i) giving-by-proxy experiences (that mirror those that typically occur in both workplace and consumer contexts) trigger increases in subsequent charitable behavior, (ii) this process is mediated by participants taking “charitable credit” for their behavior, and (iii) manipulating the amount of autonomy involved in the giving-by-proxy experience does not moderate these effects. Results highlight potential societal impacts of giving-by-proxy policies and campaigns.

我们如何培养慈善捐赠的习惯？在这里，我们调查了代理人捐赠体验的潜在力量，从市场营销和企业社会责任背景中不断增长的趋势中汲取灵感，在这些背景下，组织代表员工或消费者进行慈善捐赠。我们在工作场所（研究 1a-3）和消费者（研究 4）环境中创建了代理捐赠的实验室模型。然后，我们调查了代理捐赠的经历（具有不同程度的自主权）如何影响后续的慈善行为。五项预注册研究 ( N = 3255），我们提供的证据表明（i）通过代理人的经历（反映了那些通常发生在工作场所和消费者环境中的经历）触发了后续慈善行为的增加，（ii）这个过程是由采取“慈善行为”的参与者介导的对他们的行为给予“信用”，并且（iii）操纵代理给予体验中涉及的自主权数量不会减轻这些影响。结果突出了代理捐赠政策和活动的潜在社会影响。