Abstract: Digital platforms increasingly allow donors to distribute their contributions across multiple charitable projects. We examine how this breadth of giving shapes donors’ subsequent generosity. Across six studies (N = 2,374), we show that donors who distributed a fixed donation across multiple charities subsequently gave less to a new charitable appeal than donors who concentrated the same donation on a single charity. This effect persists across variations in donor agency and transaction frequency and in a study involving real monetary stakes. We further show that breadth of giving reduces subsequent generosity by lowering the perceived impact of the initial giving episode. Together, these findings offer new theoretical insights as well as managerial implications into the understanding of breadth of giving.

The manuscript is currently under second-round review at the Journal of Consumer Psychology.

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