Group Gift Giving: Why More Givers Tend to Buy a "Bigger" Gift?

From festivals and holidays to birthdays and graduations, friends and families often come and buy a gift together to a loved one. This kind of group gifting is also prevalent in practice. For example, eBay in 2015 has launched Group Gifts team, providing an online way for group gift giving. How would the collective form of gifting influence people's spending and gift preference? Intuitively, one may predict that group gifting would make people give less because everyone chips in the gift. Yet, in this research, we find a bigger-gift effect, such that people tend to spend more per person in a group gifting compared to that in an individual gifting because of a heightened desire to make an impact. Extant research on gift giving has predominantly focused on gifting contexts with only one giver and one receipt (e.g., Ward & Broniarczyk, 2016; Paolacci, Straeter, & de Hooge, 2015). To fill this gap, we examine how and why group gifting versus individual gifting influences people's spending. We show that group gifting triggers a greater desire to make an impact than individual gifting. This desire may occur because people always hold a "strength in numbers" belief. In turn, consumers would be motivated to buy a bigger gift fit with the name of group, which further loosens their budget and engenders more spend per person. Study 1 was a two-cell (gift giving mode: dyadic vs. individual) between-subjects design. 219 university students (31.25% males, Mage = 20.78) participated in this study were either randomly paired with another participant from the session whom they did not know (to create dyads; n = 62 dyads) or asked to work individually (n = 107 individuals). Participants in the individual (group) condition were told to imagine that their (co)friend A's 20-years-old birthday is approaching and they are planning to give a gift for A (together). Participants reported what kind of gift they want to give, how much the gift is (unit: ¥), and the range of cost they can afford (unit: ¥). Finally, they reported their demographics. Results indicated that compared to those in the individual gifting, participants in the group gifting would like to give an averagely more expensive gift (175.44¥ vs. 155.39¥; Z=2A9,p = .028) and a greater range of gift price (93.75 vs. 65.78; t(31)= 1.89,= .069, d = 2.45). Study 2 was a two-cell (gift giving mode: group vs. individual) between-subjects design. Participants were first told to imagine that they had a very close roommate A wh