Do consumers consider different factors when asking for someone's time vs. money?

Background

People frequently ask their social network to donate money to charities (e.g., Facebook fundraisers), however asking for donations of time (volunteering) is much less frequent. Considering the benefits of volunteering to individuals and society at large, this project aims to investigate potential psychological barriers to initiating peer-to-peer volunteering campaigns. 

Methodology

Study designs: Lab experiments, surveys, experimental scenarios
Statistical analyses: Linear regressions, mediation analyses

Main Findings

Individuals are as likely to donate time as they are to donate money. But when asked to predict their friends' likelihood of donating either, they rated their friends' likelihood of donating time to be lower than their likelihood of donating money. People also rate their own likelihood of agreeing to a volunteer request to be higher than their friends agreeing to the same request. This presents a mismatch, since everyone thinks they are more likely to volunteer than others are. Our findings show that this is, in part, due to a belief that their friends will volunteer only for causes they value, when in reality people generally value preserving the friendship over other factors when considering accepting a volunteer request from a friend. 

Next Steps

Ultimately, we want to know how we can get more people to volunteer and support non-profit organizations. The issue of asking friends to volunteer their time is complex because there are several things at stake, such as the friendship, the perceived value of spending time versus money, and the perceived burden one believes to be putting on their friend by asking to volunteer. The next step for this project is to examine ways to mitigate these concerns so that people can more freely ask others to volunteer with them for a cause.