Words Matter! Toward a Prosocial Call-to-Action for Online Referral: Evidence from Two Field Experiments

For your marketing

Possible founder application

A direct test idea for referral prompts: explain how the product could help the recipient, then measure completed qualified referrals rather than clicks on the invite button.

Reported result

What the study found

Prosocial framing raised both referral initiation and successful referrals compared with egoistic and equitable wording under a fixed incentive scheme. Participants reported less guilt and were more selective about whom to refer.

Research question

What the authors investigated

Can referral-request wording raise referral participation while preserving the intrinsic motivation to help friends?

Design

Large-scale randomized field experiment with additional field and online experiments comparing prosocial, egoistic, and equitable referral calls to action.

Sample and setting

The main field experiment involved 100,000 customers; the publisher abstract also reports a second field experiment and a Mechanical Turk experiment.

Scope and transfer

Limitations to keep in view

The publisher abstract does not detail the commercial setting or full limitations. Referral behavior and recipient quality may differ across products and relationship types.

Research sources

INFORMS publisher abstract retrieved with Firecrawl; reported sample and effects are summarized at abstract level.