Wearing your heart on your sleeve: The effects of conspicuous compassion on identity signaling and charitable behavior

Conspicuous compassion is one type of prosocial behavior that involves the purchase and wearing of merchandise that supports a cause. This research considers the effects that conspicuous compassion has on signaling to others and signaling to the self and the factors that influence these types of signaling. This research shows that self-signaling is influenced more by whether the merchandise supported (vs. did not support) a cause, while other-signaling is more influenced by the public (vs. private) dimension of the message on the merchandise. This research also examines a two-path model of the effects of conspicuous compassion on subsequent charitable behavior, through both self-signaling and other-signaling. Two boundary conditions, individuals' self-importance of symbolization moral identity and the differences between the purchasing and wearing components of conspicuous compassion, are also examined.;Contribution Statement. This research considers conspicuous compassion, a type of prosocial behavior involving the purchasing and wearing of merchandise that supports a cause. This behavior is not well understood in the cause-related marketing research domain, as this literature has not gone beyond the purchase of these products to investigate their actual use. This research serves as a contribution to the cause-related marketing, prosocial behavior, and signaling literatures, by directly demonstrating the effects of conspicuous compassion on self-signaling and other-signaling (which have only been assumed in past research), and the specific factors involved with conspicuous compassion that influence these types of signaling. This research further contributes to these literatures by demonstrating the effects that conspicuous compassion can have on subsequent charitable behavior through signaling, and the role that one's symbolization moral identity can play in this relationship.