ISSN 0439-755X
CN 11-1911/B
主办:中国心理学会
   中国科学院心理研究所
出版:科学出版社

心理学报 ›› 2024, Vol. 56 ›› Issue (6): 777-798.doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2024.00777

• 研究报告 • 上一篇    下一篇

流浪动物慈善救助中的“远狗近猫”效应及其机制探析

柳武妹, 王璐()   

  1. 兰州大学管理学院, 兰州 730000
  • 收稿日期:2023-07-13 发布日期:2024-04-08 出版日期:2024-06-25
  • 通讯作者: 王璐, E-mail: wangluzhiyuan@163.com
  • 基金资助:
    国家自然科学基金面上项目(71972092);甘肃省优秀研究生“创新之星”项目(2023CXZX-031)

The “far dog, near cat” effect in stray animal charity rescue and its mechanism

LIU Wumei, WANG Lu()   

  1. School of Management, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China
  • Received:2023-07-13 Online:2024-04-08 Published:2024-06-25

摘要:

已有的亲社会研究都在关注对人的慈善捐赠, 关于流浪动物的慈善救助并未有人探讨。由于日常生活中流浪动物救助信息通常会同时呈现动物类型和空间距离, 因此本文基于动物类型和空间距离之间的联结来探讨二者对流浪动物救助意愿的影响, 以及其中的机制和边界条件。通过1个内隐联想测验、1个田野实验和7个不同情景的线上实验和实验室实验, 本文发现:猫与近空间距离更匹配; 狗与远空间距离更匹配(实验1a、1b)。因此, 在近空间距离的情况下, 呈现流浪猫(vs.流浪狗)引发人们对流浪动物的更高救助意愿; 在远空间距离的情况下, 呈现流浪狗(vs.流浪猫)引发人们对流浪动物的更高救助意愿(实验2、3、3S、4、4S、5); 加工流畅性是内在中介(实验4、4S、5)。此外, 思维模式会调节上述“远狗近猫”效应, 也即该效应在基于情感的思维模式下存在但在基于理性的思维模式下消失(实验6)。理论层面, 本文关注了流浪动物这一新颖的慈善捐赠对象, 验证了动物类型和空间距离的内在联系。本文还识别出了流浪动物救助中的“远狗近猫”效应。实践层面, “远狗近猫”效应可以指导慈善组织和机构根据动物类型和空间距离的匹配来合理呈现救助信息。

关键词: “远狗近猫”效应, 动物救助, 加工流畅性, 思维模式

Abstract:

While past pro-social research has focused on charitable donations to humans, we know little about charitable assistance for stray animals. However, investigating the factors that promote human’s assistance to stray animals is of great practical importance. Currently, an increasing number of organizations and platforms are involving themselves in rescuing stray animals. When these organizations and platforms present animal rescue information, the information ad contains both animal type and spatial distance. Therefore, to address this research gap, this paper aims to study how animal type and spatial distance jointly influence consumers’ willingness to rescue stray animals, as well as the mechanisms and boundary conditions.

We propose a novel “far dog, near cat” effect. Specifically, we predict that under the near spatial distance, rescuing cat (versus rescuing dog) increases consumers’ rescuing willingness, whereas under the far spatial distance, rescuing dog (versus rescuing cat) increases consumers’ rescuing willingness. To test this effect, we conducted a total of nine experiments (N = 2848), including one implicit association test, one field experiment, one laboratory experiment, and six online experiments in different scenarios. We determined sample size of each experiment using G*power calculator. Overall, this study found that cats were more compatible with proximal spatial distance, while dogs were more compatible with distal spatial distance (Experiment 1a、1b). Therefore, presenting a stray cat (vs. a stray dog) in the proximal spatial-distance ad triggered consumers’ higher willingness to rescue the animal, while presenting a stray dog (vs. a stray cat) in the distal spatial-distance ad triggered consumers’ higher willingness to rescue the animal (Experiments 2-5). We further found that processing fluency mediated the “far dog, near cat” effect (Experiments 4-5). In addition, we found that the “far dog, near cat” effect was moderated by consumers’ thinking styles such that the "far dog, near cat" effect was evident when consumers adopted affective thinking style and disappeared when consumers adopted cognitive thinking style (Experiment 6).

This paper has significant theoretical contributions and practical implications. Theoretically, this study focuses on stray animals as a novel object of charitable donations and builds the implicit linkage between animal type and spatial distance. Also, this study identifies the “far dog, near cat” effect in stray animal rescue, adding to past pro-social literature in general and donation literature in particular. Practically, the “far dog, near cat” effect we identified in this paper can guide charitable organizations how to present animal-rescue information appropriately.

Key words: The “far dog, near cat” effect, animal rescue, processing fluency, thinking model

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