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Start here for an introduction to prioritisation research
This profile is tailored towards students studying economics, media and communications and psychology, however we expect there to be valuable open research questions that could be pursued by students in other disciplines.
Why is this a pressing problem?
The amount of money donated to charitable causes in the US alone was over $484 billion in 2021, with the largest proportion of that amount donated by individuals. There is a reason to believe that differences in the effectiveness of various charitable interventions are vast. However, donors rarely decide where to donate based on how effective their donations will be, and research suggests most donors significantly underestimate the differences in how effective different charities are.
Most research done in this area is focused on increasing the amount donated, however it seems plausible that more research on increasing the effectiveness of donations would create a greater positive impact. Further research to identify interventions that create desirable behavioural change would likely be more valuable than descriptive research (i.e. how donors behave).
Explore existing research
- Andreoni, James (1990) Impure Altruism and Donations to Public Goods: A Theory of Warm-Glow Giving, The Economic Journal
- Bekkers, René & Pamala Wiepking (2011) A Literature Review of Empirical Studies of Philanthropy: Eight Mechanisms that Drive Charitable Giving, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly
- Bergh, Robin & David Reinstein (2019) Empathic and Numerate Giving: The Joint Effects of Victim Images and Charity Evaluations
- Berman, Jonathan Z., et al. (2018) Impediments to Effective Altruism: The Role of Subjective Preferences in Charitable Giving, Psychological Science
- Caviola, Lucius, Stefan Schubert, & Joshua D. Green (2021) The Psychology of (In)Effective Altruism, Trends in Cognitive Sciences
- Costa-Gomes, Miguel & Philipp Schoenegger (2022) Sure-Thing vs. Probabilistic Charitable Giving: Experimental Evidence on the Role of Individual Differences in Risky and Ambiguous Charitable Decision-Making, PLoS ONE
- Gneezy, Uri, et al. (2014) Avoiding Overhead Aversion in Charity, Science
- Grodeck, Ben & Philipp Schoenegger (2022) Demanding the Morally Demanding: Experimental Evidence on the Effects of Moral Arguments and Moral Demandingness on Charitable Giving
- Karlan, Dean & Daniel H. Wood (2014) The Effect of Effectiveness: Donor Response to Aid Effectiveness in a Direct Mail Fundraising Experiment
- Kessler, Judd B., Katherine L. Milkman, & C. Yiwei Zhang (2019) Getting the Rich and Powerful to Give, Management Science
- Nemirow, Jason, et al. (2020) The Many Obstacles to Effective Giving, Judgment and Decision Making
- Schroeder, Juliana, et al. (2017) Endorsing Help for Others That You Oppose for Yourself: Mind Perception Alters the Perceived Effectiveness of Paternalism, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
- Small, Deborah E. & George Loewenstein (2003) Helping a Victim or Helping the Victim: Altruism and Identifiability, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty
- Toure-Tillery, Maferima & Ayelet Fishbach, Too Far to Help: The Effect of Perceived Distance on the Expected Impact and Likelihood of Charitable Action, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
- Wiepking, Pamala & René Bekkers (2012) Who Gives? A Literature Review of Predictors of Charitable Giving. Part Two: Gender, Family Composition and Income, Voluntary Sector Review
Find a thesis topic
If you’re interested in working on this research direction, below are some ideas on what would be valuable to explore further. If you want help refining your research ideas, apply for our coaching!
David Reinstein is an economist at the research organisation Rethink Priorities who has the following open research projects, and offers opportunities to engage, particularly for research students with strong aptitudes in statistics, data science, and writing:
- Increasing effective giving (& action): The puzzle, what we (need to) know offers a more targeted overview and synthesis as an open research project.
- Impact of impact treatments on giving: field experiments and synthesis
- EA market testing / open analysis of trials – includes a range of unanalysed or underanalysed data that merits further study.
This post from the charity The Life You Can Save suggests the research questions below:
- How can we design intermediaries and resources that promote better giving decisions AND that donors will want to use?
- How do personal differences impact the way people think about giving?
This post from the charity The Life You Can Save suggests the research questions below:
- How can we design intermediaries and resources that promote better giving decisions AND that donors will want to use?
- Which beliefs lead to good giving behaviour, and which beliefs obstruct it?
- How do personal differences impact the way people think about giving?
Relatedly, it could be useful to explore who is more likely to be motivated to give effectively.
You could also explore what interventions decrease biases and false beliefs that might lead people to ineffective giving (e.g. scope neglect; the belief charity effectiveness can’t be measured). See more discussion and data in this paper.
The paper What Works to Increase Charitable Donations? A Meta-Review with Meta-Meta-Analysis also has suggestions for further research.
Further resources
Apply for our coaching and we can connect you with researchers already working in this space, who can help you refine your research ideas. You can also apply to join our community if you’re interested in meeting other students working on this research direction.
Apply for our database of potential supervisors if you’re looking for formal supervision and take a look at our advice on finding a great supervisor for further ideas.
You could also join this community of behavioural scientists to connect with other researchers interested in this area and explore this directory of researchers to find other researchers working on this research direction. Luke Freeman, Executive Director at Giving What We Can, may also be able to support students tackling these questions.
Our funding database can help you find potential sources of funding if you’re a PhD student interested in this research direction.
- Sign up for our newsletter to hear about opportunities such as funding, internships and research roles.
- The Effective Altruism Behavioral Science Newsletter shares papers, research opportunities, events and calls for collaborators.
If you’re interested in understanding why people make altruistic decisions, you could also look at our profiles on attitudes on existential risk and longtermism, behavioural and attitudinal change in animal product consumption and moral circle expansion.
Contributors
This profile was last updated 31/12/2022. Thanks to Samantha Kassirer, Philipp Schoenegger, David Reinstein and Izzy Gainsburg for helpful feedback. All errors remain our own.
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AI sentience, moral status and rights
How should the possibility of AI sentience guide the development of AI and related institutions and norms?
Alternative proteins research and development
The consumption of animal products causes suffering to billions of animals each year. Alternatives could shift consumer demand away from animal products.
Anti-ageing research
Aging is a major risk factor for many diseases that medical interventions try to prevent. Can we target aging as an underlying cause of disease?
Antimicrobial resistance
Antimicrobial resistance already kills tens of thousands each year, and could kill millions without innovation. What are the best strategies to prevent it?
Applied mental health research
It’s estimated that around 10% of the population suffers from diagnosable mental health conditions, with most of them not receiving treatment.
Attitudes to existential risk and longtermism
To increase the chance of our species having a flourishing future, it’s helpful to understand how we feel and reason about the future of humanity
Behavioural and attitudinal change in animal products consumption
How do attitudes towards animals affect animal product consumption and what interventions are effective in decreasing it?
Black soldier fly sentience and welfare
Black soldier fly may be farmed on a huge scale in the coming decades. To decrease their potential suffering, we need to understand more about their welfare and capacity for sentience.
Cause specific mortality in wild animals
Understanding the causes of wild animal mortality can help us build a picture of the current state of welfare in nature and how we can improve it.
Charitable donations decision-making research
Charitable donations can do a lot of good, but donors rarely prioritise their impact. How can we encourage more effective philanthropy?
Civilisation collapses
Studying past civilisational collapses may help us predict and safeguard against future collapse and increase the chance of recovery.
Consumer research related to alternative proteins
Demand for animal products is increasing but so is the availability of alternatives. How can consumers be encouraged to explore alternative proteins?
Detection and identification of dangerous pathogens
Using metagenomic surveillance and broad-spectrum diagnostics to detect dangerous pathogens.
Developing solutions to climate change
Climate change is already causing suffering on a huge scale, and may increasingly contribute to many different crises in future. Although many resources are already dedicated to this area, there are gaps that further research is needed to fill.
Farmed animal welfare
Animal agriculture causes suffering to billions of animals each year. How can we improve welfare standards as much as possible?
Forecasting the long-term future
To reliably improve the longterm future, we must address the challenge of predicting the longterm impact of our actions
Global health and wellbeing
In 2021 about 9% of the global population was living in extreme poverty. How can we increase living standards and wellbeing in low- and lower-middle-income countries?
Global priorities research
There are many neglected, foundational uncertainties about what it means to improve the world and what actions we should take to do so
Governance of artificial intelligence
AI could radically transform the world, for better or worse. How can AI governance mitigate the risks and increase the chance it contributes to humanity's flourishing?
Great power coordination
How can we coordinate action between the Great Powers to address existential and global catastrophic risks?
Historical persistence and contingency
Improving predictions of the extent to which important features of the world today will persist into the future, and how contingent the future is on the actions we take in the present, could help inform attempts to create long-lasting positive change.
Human-aligned artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence will likely become an increasingly powerful force shaping humanity’s future, so research to align it with human values is vital.
Improving aquatic animal welfare
How can we help the hundreds of billions of aquatic animals that are raised and killed for human consumption every year?
Improving health and wellbeing metrics
Current health and wellbeing metrics have many shortcomings, leading to misallocation of resources. Developing the 'WELBY' could help.
Improving institutional decision-making
Large institutions have vast resources and capacity to help solve global problems. How can we improve their decision-making processes?
Improving pandemic governance
Pandemics pose a humanitarian crisis that could even threaten humanity’s future. How can governments prepare for future pandemics?
Improving the measurement of animal welfare
Wild animals make up the vast majority of sentient beings, but their welfare is highly neglected. One promising approach to understanding their quality of life is comparing rate of biological aging in different populations.
Improving voting methods
Learning how voting systems have been changed in the past to understand how to improve voting systems used today
Longtermism
Is improving the far future one of the key moral priorities of our time? If it is, how should this influence our actions?
Medical interventions against dangerous pathogens
To address future pandemics, we need medical interventions against pathogens to be faster to produce, effective against a broad range of threats, and cheaper and easier to produce at scale.
Moral circle expansion
How can we expand humanity's moral circle to create a more compassionate future?
Moral weight research
Foundational research exploring animals’ experiences and moral standing could help prioritize animal welfare interventions
Most important historical trends
A better understanding of historical trends and what they tell us about humanity's trajectory could inform efforts to improve and prepare for the future
Non-pharmaceutical pandemic interventions
How does the transmission of dangerous pathogens occur and how can innovation in areas such as testing, PPE, distancing and contact tracing reduce transmission?
Preventing great power conflict
Great power war could pose an existential risk, while a breakdown in cooperation could undermine vital coordination on many global problems. How can we reduce the risk of conflict?
Preventing the release of dangerous pathogens
How can we reduce the likelihood of intentional or accidental release of dangerous pathogens?
Progress studies
Advances in science, technology, institutions and culture have caused huge improvements in standards of living. How can we increase the rate of progress?
Nuclear war prevention and recovery
Could nuclear winter pose an existential threat to humanity's future and in what scenarios? How can we decrease the risk of nuclear war and increase civilisational resilience?
Reducing physical pain
Hundreds of millions of people live with chronic pain and other intensely painful conditions. What are the most urgent conditions where progress could be made?
Reducing risks from malevolent actors
How can individuals with particularly dangerous personality traits be prevented from gaining power?
Resilient foods research
How would we feed everyone in the event of a global catastrophe, such as the sun being blocked during a nuclear winter or significant disruption to electricity or industry?
Risks from volcanic eruptions
Volcanic eruptions could lead to catastrophe by causing food shortages and disruption to vital global systems. How can we monitor and mitigate the risks?
Space governance
Outer space is an increasingly valuable resource and may one day be permanently settled. How can its use be safe, sustainable and contribute to a flourishing future?
Understanding the impact of social movements
Social movements can significantly improve the world. What factors determine the change a social movement achieves?
Wildlife fertility control research
Many wild animals suffer due to resource competition. Population management of some species via contraception could increase welfare and survival.
See here for a visual map of all our research directions
