Past research has demonstrated that people prefer donating to a single identified donation recipient rather than abstractly presented donation recipients (i.e., the identifiable victim effect). The current study applies this conventional wisdom to cause-related marketing (CRM) advertising campaigns. The results show that the identifiable victim effect might not always be powerful within CRM advertising campaigns. Specifically, an advertisement with message evidence having statistical information about donation recipients is more effective for the people who possess an independent self-construal level. In contrast, a CRM ad with anecdotal message evidence about an identifiable donation recipient is effective for the people with an interdependent self-construal level. Theoretical and practical implications and directions for future research are discussed. / text

Antalet organdonatorer i Sverige räcker inte för att täcka behovet för dem som är i behov av organtransplantation. För att kunna bli organdonator krävs att vården vet om den avlidnes vilja. Det säkraste sättet att meddela sin vilja är genom donationsregister. Denna uppsats beskriver en förregistrerad experimentell mellangruppstudie som undersökte om deltagarnas (N = 348) intention till att registrera sig som organdonator påverkas av att få information om en person som är i behov av ett organ, jämfört med statistisk information. Dessutom undersöktes om intentionen påverkas av om det identifierade offret framställs som oskyldig eller icke-oskyldig. Datainsamlingen skedde via pappersenkäter. De mått som användes för intention att registrera sig som organdonator var dels självskattad intention, dels ett beteendemått där deltagarna fick svara på om de ville ha mer information. Resultaten av analysen av datan visade varken stöd för att ett oskyldigt identifierat offer skulle påverka deltagare till högre intention, eller att ett icke-oskyldigt identifierat offer skulle påverka deltagare till lägre intention. Någon signifikant skillnad fanns inte mellan grupperna för något av måtten. Studien gjordes inom ett område som inte är välbeforskat och mer forskning behövs för att kunna dra säkra slutsatser av resultatet. / The number of organ donors in Sweden is not enough to support the demand for those in need of organ transplants. To be able to become an organ donor the health services needs to know the will of the deceased. The surest way to announce one's will is through a donation register. This essay describes a pre-registered experimental between-group study that examined whether the participants’ (N = 348) intention to register as an organ donor is affected by receiving information about a person who is in need of an organ, compared with statistical information. In addition, it was examined whether the intention is affected by whether the identified are presented as innocent or non-innocent. Data gathering was done via paper surveys. The measures used for intention to register as an organ donor were partly a self-assessed intention, and partly a behavioral measure where the participants were to answer if they wanted more information. The results of the analysis of data neither supported that presentation of an innocent identified victim would influence participants to higher intention, nor that a non-innocently identified victim would influence participants to lower intention. There was no significant difference between the groups for any of the measures. The study was conducted in a field that is not well researched. More research is needed to be able to draw any absolute conclusions from the results.

The first three papers of this Ph.D. thesis experimentally study the preferences of individuals making cross-border charitable donations. In Is Foreign Aid Paternalistic? (with Anna Breman and Felix Masiye) subjects choose whether to make a monetary or a tied transfer (mosquito nets) to an anonymous household in Zambia. The mean donation of mosquito nets differs significantly from zero, and paternalistic donors constitute a higher share of the sample than do purely altruistic donors. The second paper, Corruption and the Case for Tied Aid (with Anna Breman), compares the willingness to give money to Zambia's national health budget (CBoH) with the willingness to donate mosquito nets to a health-care clinic in Lusaka. Donors clearly prefer tied aid to untied program aid. Exit questionnaires suggest the reason to be a fear of corruption and misallocation at the CBoH. In Altruism without Borders? (with Anna Breman), we study whether the willingness to give increase with the information given about the recipients. We find no significant effect of identification on donations. Women and Informality: Evidence from Senegal, the fourth paper (with Elena Bardasi), uses household survey data to study women’s work and gender wage gaps in the formal and informal sector in Dakar. Multinomial logit analysis reveals that women are 3-4 times less likely to work formally rather than informally. Wage regressions reveal that little schooling, for instance, explains a considerable part of the gender wage gap. In the informal sector, however, the wage gap between men and women remains at 28%.    The fifth paper, Does Innovation Pay? A Study of the Pharmaceutical Product Cycle, examines how a drug’s life cycle depends on its degree of therapeutic innovation. All New Chemical Entities introduced in Sweden between 1987 and 2000 are rated into one of three innovation classes: A (important gains); B (modest gains); and C (little gains). Over a 15-year life cycle, the average class A drug raises 15% higher revenues than B drugs and 114% higher revenues than C drugs. But yearly class A and C sales differences are rarely significant. When comparing innovative (A and B pooled) and imitative (C) drugs, 15-year life cycle revenues of innovative drugs exceed those of imitative drugs by 100%. This sales difference is significant in 19 out of 20 years after launch. / Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan i Stockholm, 2008 Sammanfattning jämte 5 uppsatser