I am a political theorist at Uppsala University. My research is focused on “geoism” or “Georgism”—a combination of the economic theory that landownership causes inequality and poverty and the normative position that such landownership is unjustified since no one created the land. I believe that landownership plays a significant but underappreciated role in generating systemic social problems.
Martin Jacobson 🔸
Karma: 64
I really like this idea! Personally, I am rather susceptible to gamification and tend to think of effective donations as a major “hobby”[1], so this is right up my alley.
One additional function that I believe would be really valuable is to be able to give gift vouchers to other app users. I like the general idea of donations-as-gifts, since it is often more valuable than the options and because it enables you to introduce friends and family to effective giving. However, merely donating in someone else’s name can be a bit tricky, since it sometimes feels like you are just doing whatever you wanted to do with the money, and sticking their name on it as an afterthought. I believe that giving gift vouchers for this type of project would give the gift receiver more autonomy in deciding how to use the funds, and thus feel more like a genuine gift. It would also give them an opportunity to read and learn about a few different effective projects and decide what is most closely in line with their values. Moreover, giving through this app would ensure that they are not only exposed to effective giving once but repeatedly, thereby having a larger chance of becoming habit-forming. So it would make it much easier for effective donors to also share these ideas with others, and might be an effective way to increase the pool of donors.
Building even more on this idea, one could perhaps also use donation matching to incentivize even further donations. So rather than giving you X dollars, I offer to automatically match any donations you make through the app up to X dollars.
Finally, the idea of giving many small donations to different organizations might also be useful to help people become less attached to a single cause area and more dedicated to effective giving generally.
I wish you the best of luck with the project and look forward to seeing how it progresses!
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With “hobby” I do not mean something that is trivial or non-mandatory, but rather something that I really enjoy spending my free time thinking and reading and talking about. So being prompted to learn more about it once a day would be more enjoyable than annoying.
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Thank you for writing this important post! I agree that understanding and addressing the causes of vegan dropout seems like a really important question.
I found it interesting that you mentioned social desirability bias as a factor for people under-reporting health reasons. Intuitively, I would have guessed that social desirability bias is more likely to lead to over-reporting. Health reasons seems like a more socially acceptable reason to abandon veganism compared to say, weakness of will, or value drift leading one to care less about non-human animals. While the latter reasons place ‘blame’ for ones recidivism in one’s character, health reasons rather put ‘blame’ on the diet itself. This would also explain why celebrities, who are under more public scrutiny, seem to report more health-related reasons than anonymous survey takes. But even if I suspect that health reasons may be over-reported, I still agree with your general point that these health related challenges are a real problem, which we should try to address.
One step in this direction may be to not only emphasize the importance of eating a healthy vegan diet and taking supplements, but also to give easy strategies for doing so. To use a personal example, I recently found a very easy intervention which has greatly helped me remember my daily supplements. Merely by adding it to my daily Thought Saver routine, I have gone from taking supplements <50% to >98% on a daily basis. I suspect that similar, easy to implement interventions, like adding a postit with a reminder to your bathroom mirror, or putting it in a phone alarm, can have a similar effect.
That is great to hear David, thank you for your kind comment!
And I agree with you that if a moral action is costly, then this seems to make it more praisworthy to perform it. Additionally, if these costs are shared between many people, it also seems solidaristic to take on part of these costs, and making it easier for others.
However, interestingly, I also believe that it is less costly to be public about donations if one can give some explanation or justification for this. If others perceive the reason for being public as a desire to inspire others, rather than bragging, then it will also be met with much less annoyance. So sharing this essay was not only a way for me to explain why one should take on this cost, but also a way to reduce the cost themselves.I think that this also connects to your post, which I just read! If you decide to reach out to your clients, and also give some explanation or context for doing this, I think that they would be less inclined to react negatively to it. I am really happy that the essay was helpful for your question, and inspired you to also take the pledge! Thank you for letting me know that, and good luck with the holiday gift package!
Thank you for such a nice comment! I am very happy to hear that you found it clarifying!
Hello everyone!
I am a political theorist at Uppsala University, Sweden. Similarly to how I am interested in niche ethical ideas like EA, my research is focused on rather neglected (or weird) political ideas. In particular, I am interested in ‘geoism’ or ‘Georgism’, which combines the economic idea that unequal landownership is a root cause of many social problems with the normative idea that such landownership is unjustified since land was not created by anyone. Hence, geoists argue that taxes should be shifted to land and other naturally occurring resources. Earlier this year I defended my Ph.D. thesis on the relationship between geoism and anarchism. I recently received a postdoc grant to keep on researching geoist political theory in the coming years, being partly based in Oslo and Blacksburg, VA.
In terms of cause area, I really appreciate the wide diversity within EA. But perhaps due to my interest in political theory, I have an extra soft spot for questions concerning institutional and systemic change. This is presumably where my own comparative advantage is, but I also think that it matters massively in terms of ripple effects and global capacity growth. At some point, I want to write up an exploration of land reform as a potential high-impact cause area, and the use of community land value trusts as a way to implement these ideals. The final chapter of my thesis explores some related ideas.
I was first introduced to EA ideas in a university philosophy course in 2018. My New Year’s resolution for 2022-23 was to try donating 10% of my income to effective causes for at least a year. I had previously found that smaller trials, like Veganuary, are much more doable than any permanent commitment. During this time I also thought a lot about whether to take any public pledge or just to keep on donating anonymously. I eventually became convinced that the potential social contagion effects provide a really important reason to be public with pledges. I wrote some of these considerations down in this essay, which was published at GWWC last month. I also used this occasion to sign the 🔸 10% Pledge.
Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions, and thank you all for the good that you do!
I am happy to continue brainstorming! Here are a handful of quick ideas:
I really liked the idea of getting a donation-matching award when reaching milestones!
Perhaps you could add this project itself as one of the donation options? These funds would be used for operation costs and milestone awards. Of course, it is a bit speculative how effective it will be, but once it has been in use for some time you might be able to estimate its multiplier. It also sounds like a good idea to seek some seed grants from a larger funder.
I know that Clearer Thinking has done some research on habit formation and daily rituals that might be useful in designing the app. They often discuss and promote EA ideas, so it could be a good idea to reach out to them directly for advice!
I also like the idea mentioned by Charlotte in another comment of building virtual rewards, similar to ‘Forest’. This could help people stay motivated over time, but could also be really useful for dramatically visualizing the differences in scope, and incentivize users to aim for more impact. If you are building your virtual chicken farm, you will be able to clearly see the difference between a charity that is 10x as effective as another, and be properly motivated to maximize the number of chickens per donation.
Also, feel free to reach out to me by direct message if you want to bounce ideas. This is not my area of expertise, but I am happy to help if there is something I can do!