Page 121 - 臺大管理論叢第32卷第2期

NTU Management Review Vol. 32 No. 2 Aug. 2022

Being Alone Deserves More Sympathy? Influences of Victim
Number, Cause Acuteness and Individual Differences in Self-
Construal on Charitable Advertising Effectiveness

Chun-Tuan Chang, Department of Business Management, National Sun Yat-sen University
Yi-Chia Chen, Department of Business Management, National Sun Yat-sen University, ChinaTrust
Commercial Bank
Chia-Han Chang, Department of Business Management, National Sun Yat-sen University, Thinking
Electronic Industrial Co., Ltd.

English Summary

The “Identifiable Victim Effect” (IVE) refers to the phenomenon that a single,
identified victim tends to receive much more money than those statistical or unidentified

victims. Prior research has shown that presenting a single victim can increase advertising
effectiveness (Cryder, Loewenstein, and Scheines, 2013; Friedrich and McGuire, 2010;
Kogut and Ritov, 2005; Slovic, 2010). This research extends the concept of the IVE and
compares the differences between the impacts of a single identified victim and a group of

victims on charity advertising effectiveness. To be specific, we explore whether presenting
a single, identified victim will backfire when the factors of cause acuteness (sudden
disaster vs. ongoing tragedy) and consumer individual differences in self-construal are
taken into consideration.

Prior research has shown that consumers are more responsive to charity issues
involving sudden disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis or other natural disasters (Cui,
Trent, Sullivan, and Matiru, 2003; Ellen, Mohr, and Webb, 2000; Hou, Du, and Li, 2008).
In contrast, for ongoing tragedies such as illness and right to education, consumers expect

changes to be made gradually and steadily over time. Therefore, compared with ongoing
tragedies, consumers will consider sudden disasters are of higher priority and are more
important, more influential, and more favorable charity issues. We pursue the answer to the
important research question of whether sudden disasters will always be more persuasive

than ongoing tragedies in both conditions: a single, identified victim and a group of
victims.
This study also proposes self-construal as another boundary condition. People are

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