UC San Diego

The world is facing an overwhelming number of social and environmental challenges that necessitate immediate, collaborative action. Despite numerous efforts, campaigns, and calls for action, tractable change in the public's response is sluggish. Therefore, we need a better understanding of the barriers to and motivators for action (e.g., prosocial behavior, resource conservation). This dissertation is a first step to addressing this as it explores individuals' prosocial choices and behaviors, as well as certain factors underlying them within the domains of charitable giving, pro-environmental choice, and climate change judgments. The first two chapters provide an account of individuals' aversion to overhead in charitable giving. Chapter 1 describes how higher overhead spending decreases giving and that overhead aversion is largely explained by a decrease in the perceived impact of one's donation. A large field experiment demonstrates that covering overhead costs with outside funds significantly increases giving compared to traditional fundraising techniques. Chapter 2 focuses on nonprofit executive (CEO) pay, a particularly aversive type of overhead. As the salary of a nonprofit CEO increases, the likelihood that individuals will donate decreases. Moreover, individuals are willing to "undercut" a qualified CEO by offering him/ her significantly less money for a job if the organization is described as a nonprofit versus a for profit. Chapters 3 and 4 explore underlying factors that increase consumers' choice of green products and shed light on the psychology involved in climate change judgments. Chapter 3 finds that green choice is largely and consistently explained by real-time accessibility of eco-friendly concepts---exposing individuals to green concepts prior to making a decision increases the likelihood they choose green products. Chapter 4 delves into the local warming effect, a phenomenon in which perceived abnormalities in current outdoor temperature influence climate change judgments. Results suggest the local warming effect arises due to attribute substitution, whereby individuals use accessible but irrelevant information over harder to process but more diagnostic information in making their judgments. This body of work improves our understanding of individuals' motivators and barriers to action in areas of critical global concern---charitable behavior, resource conservation, and climate change action