Can Personalized Recommendations in Charity Advertising Boost Donation? The Role of Perceived Autonomy

When powered by artificial intelligence (AI), the effectiveness of advertising generally improves. However, evidence shows that personalized recommendations in charity advertising may have a dark side. The existing literature about the effects of personalized recommendations in advertising is rooted primarily in outcome utility, including outcome benefits and costs. Nevertheless, consumers tend to sacrifice their own interests without expecting anything in return given that they cannot directly monitor and measure the behavior outcome in charitable consumption; this elicits in them a focus on their autonomy and signal utility in responding to charity advertising. Thus, in our article, we focus on the reasons that personalized recommendations have negative effects in charity advertising based on self-determination theory. Through five studies, the results reveal that consumers display lower donation intentions when they receive charity advertising with (versus without) personalized recommendations due to a decrease in perceived autonomy. In addition, this negative effect can be mitigated by servant communication styles and providing consumers with free choices. These conclusions not only enrich the literature on personalized recommendations in advertising, charity advertising, and AI marketing but also provide some guidance for advertisers to enhance the performance of personalized recommendations in charity advertising.