mobile fundraising for haiti: 
a behavioral economics perspective
In the three weeks following the earthquake,
mGive processed over $37 million in donations to Haiti.
Image motivation refers to an individual’s tendency to be motivated by how others perceive them. Applied to altruism, this phenomenon explains the social currency of “looking good by doing good.”
Conditional on prosocial activity yielding a positive image, people will act more generously and prosocially in public than in private settings.

--Ariely, Bracha, and Meier, 2007
Identity and information can matter. Knowing only the distribution of contributions, but not the identity of the givers, has no discernible effect. Knowing only the identity but not the individual contributions has a modest effect of increasing donations. However, knowing both who is in your group and what each is choosing [to donate] can significantly increase giving . . . the combination of information and identification tends to increase contributions.
--Andreoni and Petrie, 2004
We must understand the principles of image motivation within social media when designing for causes.
2.3 million tweets about "haiti" or "red cross"
Information and identification together result in 59 percent more giving to the public good over the baseline of the typical public goods experiment.

--Andreoni and Petrie, 2004
9:38 PM
January 12, 2010
january 12-14
1.2%
0.4%
Percent of Tweets
Anchoring
+
decoupling
4:53 PM
act now 
pay 10 dollars later
but what else is going on here?
Image motivation is helping drive donations 
in social networks.
so what's this mean for designers?
Some examples
thank you.
January 14
January 13
your social network
A friend's tweets and posts
you
"It's only $10 and all of my friends are doing it. I'll do it, then post my donation."