In the wake of a natural disaster, donation decisions aren’t clear-cut

On November 8, Typhoon Haiyan swept through the Philippines, leaving a trail of disaster in its wake. Since then, private donors, nonprofits, and governments from around the world have pledged tens of millions of dollars to assist survivors and help rebuild the storm-stricken nation.

But understanding which disasters get relief is a tricky business, and donation-related decisions aren’t well understood. A new study in the journal Psychological Science suggests that donors may be focusing on misleading measures when they decide how much to give—or whether to give at all.

Generally, media coverage of natural disasters gives two types of figures related to the victims: the number of fatalities and the number of people “affected.” This second figure includes those that are “requiring immediate assistance during a period of emergency,” according to the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters.

In a perfectly rational world, humanitarian aid should arguably be based on the number of people affected by the disaster rather than the number of people who died as a result of the disaster. But as Ioannis Evangelidis and Bram Van den Bergh report, people tend to base their donation-related decisions on the number of fatalities caused by a natural disaster rather than the number of surviving people who may need help.

Dead, or just affected?

In 381 natural disasters that occurred between 2001 and 2011—including floods, landslides, tropical and winter storms, earthquakes, avalanches, and wildfires—the total amount of financial donations was highly correlated with the number of fatalities reported. For each additional person killed in these disasters, donors gave more than $9,000 in aid. Furthermore, whether financial aid was given at all was strongly related to the number of deaths. In contrast, the total number of people affected by each disaster was not related to either the likelihood of receiving aid or the total amount of donations given.

To expand on this correlational data, Evangelidis and Van den Bergh conducted additional studies to get at why death tolls are such a salient factor in disaster-related donation decisions. First, they asked participants to allocate funding to hypothetical earthquakes and floods in various countries around the world. In one condition, the disaster had killed more people than it had affected (e.g. 11,000 killed and 6,000 affected) and in the other condition, the reverse was true (e.g. 6,000 killed and 11,000 affected). As expected, people thought that more money should be donated to the disasters in which a greater number of people were killed than affected, no matter the type or location of the disaster.

Why should this be true? The researchers hypothesized that it’s not that people care more about the fatality count than the number of people affected; rather, the term “affected” is nebulous and potentially unreliable. Perhaps people believe that the number of deaths is an easier number to pin down, so they base their donations on the cue they trust more.

When the vague term “affected” was substituted with the more precise term “homeless,” the results were reversed; participants thought that more financial aid should be given to a disaster in which 2,000 people were killed and 4,000 were left homeless, compared to a disaster in which 4,000 were killed and 2,000 left homeless.

When given a highly reliable cue (number of fatalities) and a less-reliable cue (number of people affected), people may make decisions based on the cue that is less prone to measurement error. However, if both cues seem to be reliable—such as fatality counts and homelessness figures—people may think more clearly about which cue is more relevant to the decision. The more relevant cue when it comes to disaster relief, Evangelidis and Van den Bergh argue, is the number of survivors needing assistance, not the death toll. I’m not sure this is a universal truth—after all, some aid should go to recovering and dealing with the bodies—but I’d agree that it’s generally a reasonable guideline.