Portraying One or Many: Interaction of Number of Beneficiary and Donor’s Sense of Power on Donation Outcomes

Numerous studies support the identifiable victim effect that donors prefer a single and identifiable beneficiary over multiple and unidentifiable beneficiaries. However, there is little understanding of how presenting pictures of single versus multiple beneficiaries interacts with donors’ traits. This research focuses on donors’ sense of power and explores its impact on the comparative effects of presenting different numbers of beneficiaries. We adopted an online experimental design and collected data from 515 participants across two studies. These two studies provide convergent results that high-power donors donate more when they view pictures of multiple beneficiaries, whereas low-power donors donate more when they view pictures of a single beneficiary. Besides, Study 2 finds that the interaction effect of sense of power and number of beneficiaries on donation effectiveness is mediated by perceived responsibility and self-efficacy. The findings provide implications for managers on how to present pictures featuring different numbers of beneficiaries to donors with varying senses of power.