Journal of Contemporary Issues in Business and Government

Abstract

The current research makes a pioneering contribution by examining the existing literature on
use of guilt in online appeals for donation by Non-Government Organisations(NGOs) using
the Integrated Marketing Communication(IMC) perspective forwarded by Batra and
Keller(2016) specifically their communication-matching model. Also, the present study
examines the popularity of different communication content characteristics in online guilt
appeals for donation, namely the type of guilt, type of appeal used- cognitive or emotional,
type of guilt statements and application of donation-button through the content analysis
methodology on 213 Indian NGO websites. The findings reveal that more than half the NGO
websites use guilt as an appeal for raising donations and it is existential-guilt which is used
96.6 percent of the times. Further, the NGOs prefer emotive guilt appeals in visual form over
cognitive appeals and statement of fact is the most used statement-type. However, the use of
donation button is found only in 65.25 percent of the websites, thus highlighting the nascent
stage of website development of Indian NGOs. Finally in the review of literature on ‘guilt
and online donations’ conducted through the lens of IMC theory, a paucity of research is
revealed and the study is concluded with suggestions to simultaneously examine the cross
effects of a variety of online and offline media in the context of guilt appeals and a need is
felt for more complex research designs and experiments in the e-philanthropy literature.