RESEARCH | Corporate Giving: Time vs Cash vs Donations
Suggested audience: CSR professionals, corporate giving professionals, brand reputation professionals
Takeaway: Time donations foster more favorable consumer evaluations than cash contributions by enhancing perceived altruism and bolstering brand trust associated with the donor firm. To a lesser extent, product donations also enhance perceived altruism.
To investigate how donation types (time vs. cash vs. product) influence consumer evaluations of companies engaged in corporate giving, the researchers conducted two experimental studies.
In Study 1, survey participants were randomly assigned to read a newsletter featuring a fictitious firm donating to wildfire relief. The study utilized a design crossing the three donation types with firm warmth (low vs. high).
In Study 2, participants evaluated donation scenarios within the hospitality industry. This study crossed donation types with brand reputation, using a real-life budget motel chain and a budget-to-moderate-priced hotel chain as proxies for low and high brand reputation.
The authors examined the impact of donation types on three consumer outcomes:
- Consumer Attitude: feelings toward the company
- Charitable Credit the firm received for prosocial acts
- Word-of-Mouth: consumer willingness to recommend/speak favorably about the brand
Researchers also tested if Perceived Altruism and Brand Trust serve as the underlying mechanisms (mediators) that explain why donation types affect consumer evaluations.
Key Findings:
- When firms donate time rather than cash, consumers are more likely to attribute the corporate giving to genuine altruistic motives rather than self-serving interests. This effect is more pronounced for "low-warmth" firms — those perceived as less friendly, generous, or trustworthy, and for firms with alower brand reputation.
- Perceived altruism mediates the positive relationship between time donation and consumer evaluation, especially for firms viewed as less friendly or trustworthy. In addition, altruism signaled by time donations serves as a driver for building brand trust, which subsequently leads to more favorable consumer evaluations, especially for donor firms with lower brand reputation.
- Product donations generate more altruistic attributes than cash donations for donor firms.
If citing, please refer to original article: Saha, S., Pappu, R., Ranjan, K. R., & Akhlaghpour, S. (2025). Donation type effects in corporate giving: A moderated dual mediation model. Journal ofBusiness Research, 189, Article 115195. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115195
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