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On the Desiderata for Online Altruism: Nudging for Equitable Donations

Authors:

Abhijnan Chakraborty,

Krishna P. Gummadi,

Hoda HeidariAuthors Info & Claims

Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Volume 4, Issue CSCW2

Article No.: 126, Pages 1 - 21

https://doi.org/10.1145/3415197

Published: 15 October 2020 Publication History

Abstract

Online donation platforms help equalize access to opportunity and funding in cases where inequalities exist. In the context of public school education in the United States, for instance, financial inequalities have been shown to be reflected in the educational system, since schools are primarily funded through local property taxes. In response, private charitable donation platforms such as DonorsChoose.org have emerged seeking to alleviate systemic inequalities. Yet, the question remains of how effective these platforms are in redressing existing funding inequalities across school districts. Our analysis of donation data from DonorsChoose shows that such platforms may in fact be ineffective in mitigating existing inequalities or may even exacerbate them. In this paper, we explore how online educational charities could direct more funding towards more impoverished schools without compromising their donors' freedom of choice with respect to donation targets. Seeking to answer this question, we draw on the line of work on choice architectures in behavioral economics and pose a novel research question on the impact of interface design on equity in socio-technical systems. Through controlled experiments, we demonstrate how simple interface design interventions - such as modifying default rankings or displaying additional information about schools - might lead to changes in donation distributions helping platforms direct more funding towards schools in need. Going beyond online educational charities, we hope that our work will bring attention to the role of interface design nudges in the social requirements of online altruism.

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Dash AChakraborty AGhosh SMukherjee AGummadi K(2024)Investigating Nudges toward Related Sellers on E-commerce Marketplaces: A Case Study on AmazonProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36869948:CSCW2(1-31)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2024
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Index Terms

On the Desiderata for Online Altruism: Nudging for Equitable Donations
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Interaction design
    1. Empirical studies in interaction design

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cover image Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction

Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction Volume 4, Issue CSCW2

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October 2020

2310 pages

EISSN:2573-0142

DOI:10.1145/3430143

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Apple Inc.

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Published: 15 October 2020

Published in PACMHCI Volume 4, Issue CSCW2

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Cited By

Dash AChakraborty AGhosh SMukherjee AGummadi K(2024)Investigating Nudges toward Related Sellers on E-commerce Marketplaces: A Case Study on AmazonProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36869948:CSCW2(1-31)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3686994
Kim SHo JLi YFan BYang WRamey JFox SZhu HZimmerman JEslami M(2024)Integrating Equity in Public Sector Data-Driven Decision Making: Exploring the Desired Futures of Underserved StakeholdersProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36869058:CSCW2(1-39)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3686905
Puspitasari FTyson GHaq EHui PLee L(2023)Ghost Booking as a New Philanthropy ChannelProceedings of the 34th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media10.1145/3603163.3609028(1-11)Online publication date: 4-Sep-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3603163.3609028
Dash AChakraborty AGhosh SMukherjee AGummadi K(2022)Alexa, in you, I trust! Fairness and Interpretability Issues in E-commerce Search through Smart SpeakersProceedings of the ACM Web Conference 202210.1145/3485447.3512265(3695-3705)Online publication date: 25-Apr-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3485447.3512265

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