Extrinsic incentives and donation rates

Employees at Deutsche Bank were asked to donate their day’s salary to charity. They were emailed either personally or impersonally, and they were either offered sweets or not offered sweets. Researchers found that employees who were sent personal emails were more likely to donate (11%), those who were given sweets were also more likely to donate (12%), and those exposed to both treatments were even more likely to donate (17%), as opposed to the control group (5%). They raised over 500,000 pounds and estimated they would have raised over 1,000,000 pounds if everyone had been given both treatments.