When does socioeconomic status promote or inhibit donation behaviour? The joint influence of donation visibility and incentives.

What shapes the socioeconomic status-donation behaviour relationship? While research has identified donation visibility and incentives as important contextual factors, their joint effects remain relatively unclear. Across four studies, we examined how the combination of donation visibility (public versus private) and incentives (incentivized versus non-incentivized) influences the aforementioned relationship. We found that socioeconomic status negatively predicted donation behaviour in private non-incentivized and public incentivized contexts, but positively predicted donation behaviour in private incentivized and public non-incentivized contexts. A real charitable donation experiment replicated these findings and demonstrated their validity. These joint effects were driven by two forms of impure altruistic motives. In private contexts, incentives reduced lower- (vs. higher-) socioeconomic-status individuals' motivation to donate for psychological benefits. In public contexts, incentives reduced higher- (vs. lower-) socioeconomic-status individuals' motivation to donate for social recognition. The findings provide a novel framework for understanding the variability in the relationship between socioeconomic status and donation behaviour and important implications for charitable donation appeals.