More Human, More Heart: How Perceived Campaign Authorship Shapes Charitable Giving

While prior work on information communicated on signage has explored the effectiveness of different types of messages on in-store signs, relatively few studies have examined the impact of signage (posters) promoting charitable organizations. Moreover, while past research has focused on the characteristics of donors and donation recipients, little is known about how the features of the donation campaign influence charitable behavior. In this research, variance in consumer response to the content of posters that promote charitable giving is based on whether they have been created by humans versus artificial intelligence (AI). Through two experiments, we demonstrate that consumers are more likely to donate—and donate more—when the campaign is attributed to a human rather than to an AI. This effect occurs because human-authored campaigns elicit greater emotional resonance, making the message feel more emotionally authentic and personally meaningful. These findings document consumer skepticism towards the content of signage focused on charitable giving when it is generated by artificial intelligence. Practical implications for the design of emotionally persuasive signage in nonprofit and other contexts are discussed.