You want to urge people to donate money and/or volunteer their time. This can only be achieved if the desired behaviour (donating or volunteering) is easy to carry out.
Rai et al. researched this with volunteers at the CTL hotline (Crisis Text Line). When volunteers were asked to work 200 hours per year, only 5% of volunteers did this. 200 hours per year can be daunting as it seems like a lot.
The researchers then framed this time in 2 different ways:
- 4 hours per week
- 8 hours in two weeks
These times are, of course, roughly equal to 200 hours per year.
Once the times were framed as above, there was an 8% increase of the total number of volunteers in only 12 weeks’ time (the period of research).
The brain prefers the easiest option
The same applies to donating and other behaviours. For example, it is easy to make a one-time donation of €1.50 by text message or to go to a website to sign a petition. You don’t have to do much or think too much about what you must do in these instances. This has to do with the way in which we process information, which is mostly unconscious: automatic and fast. Our brain prefers the easiest and least effortful way of doing things.
