The question matters to humanitarian and charitable assistance organizations. Over the last decade, more of them have begun to provide help for cash in the form of cash as an alternative to donations in kind (such as groceries or packaged products). Research It shows that these cash transfers work at the nominal value: they fulfill a similar goal with the strengthening of food in kind, while being cheaper and easier to distribute. But how these cash donations are perceived by those who receive them are not so well thought out.
Kellogg researchers Samantha kassirer; Ata jami; Maryam Kouchaki I wanted to help change it. “Previous studies have compared the impact of cash supply in relation to no help,” says Kouchaki, “while we wanted to compare people’s response to cash against food.”
“We can’t just assume that because someone needs, they will be happy with anything we give them,” Kassirer adds. “It is an incredibly vulnerable place to be in, with so much ability to stigma or reaction from your community, but also how you see yourself.”
The researchers conducted a series of experiments in Kenya and the US to find out how different types of charity aid influenced people’s emotions – and if these emotions would affect their willingness to accept reinforcement in the first place. Their results indicate that cash and help in kind encourage different psychological answers and behaviors from the people who receive it.
Donations in kind can lead to positive feelings of care and better assistance. But under certain circumstances, cash can create feelings of shame – and make people less likely to accept the help of charity. However, when cash assistance comes from the government instead of a charity organization, these emotional and behavioral results disappear.
Takeaaway, according to Kassirer, is not that cash is bad and the food is good. Instead, the type of charity organizations also offers a social message that can either support or undermine their efforts.
“How do people feel when they get help they are going to lead their subsequent behavior,” he says. “We need to understand how this is happening.”
Ways of relationship
Kassirer, Jami and Kouchaki began with a field experiment with a Food Charity Foundation in Kenya. Of the 500 people who had already received assistance, half were called through text message to get a grocery basket, while the other half said they would receive an equivalent amount of cash. The research team recorded how many people from each group appeared to receive the help and then asked the recipients to describe how their help made them feel about themselves.
The majority of people in both groups took the help offered, but 8 percent more people appeared for cash food. And the people who received cash were more likely to mention feelings of shame than those who received food. This has suggested to researchers that negative emotions can be responsible to make cash help less attractive.
But why would the shame be associated with money and not a grocery store? To understand this, the researchers turned to a theory proposed for the first time in the early 1990s by anthropologist Alan Fiske. “Identifies the“ ways ”people use in social interactions that you do not necessarily know but [that] I’m telling you what is expected from you and the other person, ”Kassirer explains.
After consulting with Fiske, the researchers realized that two of these ways could explain the differences in the way people react to help.
In “Community sharing” function, people pay attention to what they have in common and act in ways that enhance the sense of unity and belong to it. “He tells you that you belong to a community, so providing and taking is a way to create more social glue that enhances this feeling of care,” says Kassirer.
In another function, called “market pricing”, people focus on ensuring that individual exchanges and transactions feel balanced. “If you get something, you expect to give something back to ratio. You don’t just get something for nothing,” Kassirer explains. “If you do, you look down as an unwanted social partner.”
Researchers assume that the type of help that offers a charity – in this case, food or cash – shows a social signal to the people who receive it, which shifts them in a way that encourages certain emotions. Suggest that food exchange was is associated with a function of “Community sharing”, which is is driven by Positive feelings of unity. The exchange of money, meanwhile, suggests that a transaction is taking place – and reinforces the idea that “getting something for anything” is shameful.
“Market pricing relationships are not inherently confusing, but what may feel ashamed is if you feel you don’t make your role,” says Kassirer.
Conversations
To check whether this explanation participated in a different cultural context, the researchers conducted four additional experiments on the US online participants were asked to imagine that they could not afford enough food due to COVID-19 of assistance (either grocery stores or cash), which could choose whether or not to get. Finally, as in the study in Kenya, participants described their emotional answers.
In three of the experiments, participants were more likely to get food from cash. They also said that they felt more of belonging – and less shame – when they received groceries than when they received money. “All correlations looked like what we would expect” if the two social ways actually affect people’s behavior, says Kassirer.
The fourth experiment, however, proved to be different. In this edition, participants were informed that food help comes from either a charity or the government. In the case of government aid, the stigma around the cash was reversed: people really felt less ashamed of accepting money from the government than they did for the acceptance of groceries. And as they received help from Uncle Sam, people were just as willing to get either the form of help.
Why? According to Kassirer, the answer may be in the fact that these participants have also described more to have more market pricing with the government than a Community distribution. ‘This can [contribute to] A feeling that he is entitled to resources offered by the government, “he explains. So there is no added shame to accept cash.
Change of storytelling
Researchers emphasize that their findings do not intend to challenge cash help. Instead, by learning how emotions can affect people’s willingness to accept different types of help, it may be possible to make cash transfer more effectively.
“The question we were in this is.” We leave money on the table? “Kassirer says.” We want to do it so that people are just as willing to take cash as they are willing to take food. “
According to the authors, more research on ways to reduce the stigma around the help of cash should be done. Policy managers and assistance organizations, for example, may want to consider “the development of interventions within charity programs to present cash in ways that enhance dignity and minimize the stigma,” says Kouchaki.
Kassirer adds that charities may try to point out their government support, as people seem more likely to receive help from the government, in part because they believe they are entitled to support as citizens.
“But are there other narratives that we can create?” he asks. “When you receive money from a charity organization, you may have this narrative. I am poor and I am needed and so I get help. This is not feeling well.”
Kassirer investigates how charities can be removed from a “poverty” narrative. For example, the introduction of the idea of luck in distributing charity aid – perhaps by creating the randomization process that feels like a game – could prevent the stigma from holding.
“If we are able to help us feel more useful through interference in harmful narratives,” he says, “he is going to make the help even more effective.”
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