Overview

Professor Keenan studies barriers to and motivators of prosocial behavior, using a combination of field, laboratory, and online experimental methods. Her recent work investigates donors’ aversion to overhead spending by nonprofits, including its negative effects on the choice to give. In a large-scale field experiment, she and her colleagues found that offering potential donors an overhead-free solution, made possible by funds from a major philanthropist, increases both the donation rate and total dollars raised substantially more than other approaches, such as matching gifts. A subset of Professor Keenan’s research focuses on topics related to environmental sustainability, including drivers of green product choice, hotel towel reuse, and the underlying psychological processes involved in climate-change-related judgments.