Technology is rapidly changing the world of philanthropy, providing organizations with new ways to raise funds and engage donors. One promising new development is the use of cause-related games to mobilize potential donors. Although gamification has long been used in fundraising, its effectiveness, especially for games that have philanthropic components but are not directly related to fundraising, calls for empirical examination. In this paper, we report findings from a study conducted in China. Using online snowball sampling, we recruited 1618 participants (effective sample size of 1586, comprising 41% males and 59% females). The results revealed that participation in cause-related games is significantly associated with an individual’s willingness to donate, and past donation and volunteer experiences moderate this relationship. These findings shed light on the potential mechanism through which cause-related games can influence potential donors, which has significant implications for theory and practice.

In many tourism-dependent islands, an acute imbalance between increasing demand for wastewater management and the capacity of existing sewage infrastructure represents an increased risk for ecosystems and population health. Given that locals may be opposed to increasing tourism taxes to fund investments in sewerage, promoting charitable giving among tourists may be an alternative to improve wastewater management in tourist destinations. Using a contingent valuation survey, this study assesses whether tourists are willing to donate to improve wastewater management in San Andres Island, Colombia. Split-sample treatments were implemented to examine the response of tourists' giving preferences to priming communications regarding the effects of poor wastewater management. Results indicate that tourists are willing to donate to improve local wastewater management. Our findings also provide useful insights about tourists' giving preferences to design effective charitable giving campaigns to improve wastewater management.

We replicate and extend unit asking – a method to increase donations by first asking donors for their willingness to donate for one unit and then asking for donations for multiple units (Hsee, Zhang & Xu, 2013) We conducted a large scale replication and extension using a 2 (unit asking, control) × 3 (domains; children (original), animals, environment) between-subjects design. Across three domains, we find that unit asking increased donations, suggesting that this method can be used to increase giving to different charitable causes.