Why Giving People an Option to Be Charitable May Hurt Your Business

September 02, 2013 HBR's The Daily Stat After a store chain introduced new recycling machines that allowed consumers to donate their returned bottle-and-can deposits to charity, people started avoiding the machines, says a team led by Mikael Knutsson of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. Whereas the amount of deposits returned by the old machines had been up to 3,026 Swedish krona higher per month than in the previous year, indicating a rising level of recycling, the amount returned by the new machines was up to 12,303 kronalower per month year-over-year. The results show that in the absence of pressure to donate, many people are reluctant to give to charity. SOURCE: Do people avoid opportunities to donate? A natural field experiment on recycling and charitable giving