Past research has shown the significant role of emotional appeals in charitable advertising. Most studies in this area have examined the effects of negative emotions, but it is less clear when and how positive emotions can also be effective in encouraging donation allocations. Across two experimental studies, the present research demonstrates that the congruent matching of pride with positive past performance and compassion with negative past performance increases donation allocations. This ‘match-up’ effect emerges because pride elicits concerns for merit, whereas compassion elicits concerns for need. These findings offer important implications, both theoretically and managerially, by systematically highlighting how different, discrete positive emotions – pride and compassion – can be beneficial in charitable advertising, depending on the message highlighting the past performance of a charity.

Charitable giving in 2017 reached an all-time high of US$ 410 billion, surpassing the US$ 400 billion mark for the first time (Frank, 2018). Notably, 70% of total giving came from individual donations (Frank, 2018). Hence, it is not big companies but the general public who are the main contributors for the greatest proportion of total giving. However, despite the encouraging total amount of donations, research also indicates a downward trend in terms of individual patterns of charitable giving over the years. Specifically, a study of the prosocial behavior of more than 9000 individuals over more than 15 years suggests that overall, prosocial behavior among individuals has dropped by around 11% since the early 2000s (Anzilotti, 2017). Similarly, the Charities Aid Foundation (2018) reported a significant decline in the number of people donating money to charities in 2017 and 2018. This highlights the importance of charitable organizations understanding effective advertising strategies for motivating donation behavior. One of the most common ways for charitable organizations to promote their cause is by employing emotional appeals in their advertising. In particular, negative emotional appeals, including guilt (Hibbert et al., 2007), anger (Vitaglione and Barnett, 2003), and sadness (Bagozzi and Moore, 1994; Small and Verrochi, 2009) are commonly used in driving donation behavior. However, there is a growing body of literature examining how positive emotional appeals can be effective in motivating prosocial behavior (Cavanaugh et al., 2015; Piff et al., 2015). Table 1 summarizes key findings from the extant literature on the relationship between emotion and prosocial behavior. From the managerial perspective, examining positive emotional appeals is now a critical issue because there have been strong calls for non-profit organizations to employ more positive emotional appeals (Birkwood, 2016; Breeze and Dean, 2012). This is because when negative emotional appeals are being used repeatedly by a charity, such negative feelings can intensify, leading to reduced sympathy and even unfavorable consumer evaluations of the charity (Stayman and Aaker, 1988).