Munz, Kurt P., Minah H. Jung, and Adam L. Alter (2018), "Name Similarity Encourages Generosity: A Field Experiment in Email Personalization," Poster presented at the Society for Judgment and Decision Making Annual Conference Conference New Orleans, LA.
In a randomized email field experiment with DonorsChoose.org (N = 30,297), donors who shared a surname with a teacher were more likely to open, click, donate, and donated more to the teacher’s classroom. Different-surname donors were also more generous when they shared a first-letter with the requesting teacher. We quantify various components of similarity including matches on full name, initial name letters, gender, ethnicity, and country of origin.
