When Distributing Aid, Consider Whether It Will Be Seen as a Handout or a Helping Hand

The question matters for humanitarian and charitable aid organizations, too. Over the past decade, more of them have begun providing food assistance in the form of cash, as an alternative to in-kind donations (such as groceries or packaged goods). Research shows that these cash transfers work at face value: they fulfill a similar goal as in-kind food aid while being cheaper and easier to distribute. But how these cash donations are perceived by those who receive them isn’t as well-studied.

Kellogg researchers Samantha Kassirer, Ata Jami, and Maryam Kouchaki wanted to help change that. “Past studies have compared the effect of offering cash versus no aid at all,” Kouchaki says, “whereas we wanted to compare people’s response to cash versus food aid.”

“We can’t just assume that because someone’s in need, they’re going to be happy with anything we give them,” adds Kassirer. “It’s an incredibly vulnerable place to be in, with so much potential for stigma or backlash from your community, and also for how you see yourself.”

The researchers conducted a battery of experiments in Kenya and the U.S. to find out how different types of charitable aid influenced people’s emotions—and whether those emotions would affect their willingness to accept aid in the first place. Their results suggest that cash and in-kind aid encourage different psychological responses and behaviors from the people who receive it.

In-kind donations can lead to positive feelings of being cared for and better take-up of aid. But under certain conditions, cash can create feelings of shame—and make people less likely to accept the charity’s help. However, when cash aid comes from the government instead of a charitable organization, these emotional and behavioral effects disappear.

The takeaway, according to Kassirer, isn’t that cash is bad and food is good. Instead, the kind of aid charities provide also sends a social message that can either support or undermine their efforts.

“How people feel when receiving help is going to drive their subsequent behavior,” she says. “We need to understand how that happens.”

Relationship modes

Kassirer, Jami, and Kouchaki began by conducting a field experiment with a food-aid charity in Kenya. Out of 500 people already receiving aid, half were invited via text message to pick up a basket of groceries, while the other half were told they would receive an equivalent amount of cash. The research team recorded how many people from each group showed up to receive the aid, and then asked the recipients to describe how receiving the aid made them feel about themselves.

The majority of people in both groups picked up the aid being offered, but 8 percent more people showed up for food than cash. And people who received cash were more likely to report feelings of shame about it compared with those who received food. This suggested to the researchers that negative emotions might be responsible for making the cash aid less appealing.

But why would shame be associated with money and not groceries? To make sense of this, the researchers turned to a theory first proposed in the early 1990s by anthropologist Alan Fiske. “He identifies ‘modes’ that people use in social interactions, that you’re not necessarily aware of but [that] tell you about what’s expected of you and the other person,” Kassirer explains.

After consulting with Fiske, the researchers realized that two of these modes might explain the differences in how people react to receiving aid.

In the “communal sharing” mode, people pay attention to what they have in common and act in ways that reinforce a sense of unity and belonging. “It tells you that you belong to a community, so giving and receiving is a way to create more of the social glue that fosters this feeling of being cared for,” Kassirer says.

In another mode, called “market pricing,” people focus on making sure that individual exchanges and transactions feel balanced. “If you receive something, you’re expected to give something back in proportion. You don’t just receive something for nothing,” Kassirer explains. “If you do, you’re looked down upon as an undesirable social partner.”

The researchers hypothesized that the type of aid offered by a charity—in this case, food or cash—sends a social signal to the people receiving it, which shifts them into a mode that encourages certain emotions. They propose that exchanging food has been associated with a “communal sharing” mode, which is driven by positive feelings of unity. Exchanging money, meanwhile, suggests that a transaction is taking place—and reinforces the idea that “getting something for nothing” is shameful.

“Market-pricing relationships aren’t inherently shameful, but what can feel shameful is if you sense that you’re not doing your part,” says Kassirer.

Money talks

To test if this explanation held up in a different cultural context, the researchers conducted four additional experiments in the U.S. Online participants were asked to imagine that they were unable to afford enough food because of COVID-19, then to imagine being offered a certain kind of aid (either groceries or cash), which they could choose whether or not to pick up. Finally, like in the study in Kenya, the participants described their emotional responses.

In three of the experiments, participants were more likely to pick up food than cash. They also reported feeling more belonging—and less shame—when receiving groceries than when receiving money. “All the correlations looked like what we would expect” if the two social modes were indeed influencing people’s behavior, says Kassirer.

The fourth experiment, however, turned out differently. In this version, participants were told that the food aid came either from a charity organization or the government. In the case of government aid, the stigma around receiving cash reversed: people actually felt less shame about accepting money from the government than they did about accepting groceries. And as long as they were getting help from Uncle Sam, people were equally willing to pick up either form of aid.

Why? According to Kassirer, the answer may lie in the fact that these participants also described having more of a market-pricing relationship with the government than a communal-sharing one. “That might [contribute to] a feeling of being entitled to resources that the government is offering,” she explains. “You’re doing your job by being a law-abiding citizen, and the government’s job is to offer basic resources to citizens of the country.” In other words, you’re not getting something for nothing—so there isn’t added shame accepting cash.

Changing the narrative

The researchers stress that their findings aren’t meant to cast doubt on cash aid. Instead, by learning how emotions can affect people’s willingness to accept different kinds of help, it may be possible to make cash transfers even more effective.

“The question we came to this with is, ‘Are we leaving money on the table?’” says Kassirer. “We want to make it so that people are just as willing to take up cash as they are willing to take up food.”

According to the authors, more research needs to be done on ways to reduce stigma around cash aid. Policymakers and aid organizations, for example, may want to consider “developing interventions within charitable programs to present cash aid in ways that foster dignity and minimize stigma,” Kouchaki says.

Kassirer adds that charities might try highlighting their government support since people seem more likely to accept cash aid from the government, in part because they believe they are entitled to the support as citizens.

“But are there other narratives we can create?” she asks. “When you’re receiving money from a charity, you might have this narrative of, I’m poor, and I’m needy, and that’s why I’m receiving help. That doesn’t feel good.”

Kassirer is investigating how charities might shift away from a “poverty” narrative. For example, introducing the idea of luck into the distribution of charitable cash aid—perhaps through making the randomization process feel like a game—might prevent the stigma from taking hold.

“If we’re able to make help feel more helpful through intervening on harmful narratives,” she says, “it’s going to make the aid even more effective.”