Pilot study
Testing a Better Checkout Donation Option
Better Behavior Foundation · 2026
Preliminary result. A 100-person pilot compared an original checkout donation request with a revised version in a simulated booking flow. The participating airline is confidential. The fixed-amount donation decision used real money.
What we tested
The study asked a straightforward product question: can a clearer, more usable donation option at checkout help more travelers follow through? Participants saw either the original request or a revised request, then decided whether to make the fixed-amount contribution.
The pilot also asked whether travelers wanted an option to give at checkout, including both donors and non-donors.
What we found
- The revised request increased real-donation participation from 28% to 42%: a 14-percentage-point difference across the 100-person comparison.
- 79.2% of respondents to a separate 120-response preference question said they preferred having a donation option at checkout. This result reports stated preference for the feature.
The direction is promising, but this was a small pilot. Its own study materials call for a larger A/B test before treating the observed lift as a precise deployment estimate.
What this means for a live test
The useful next step is a live, voluntary checkout experiment that preserves a clear decline path and measures contribution uptake, amount given, completed bookings, abandonment, and customer response together. A real booking test can show how the request affects conservation funding, completed bookings, abandonment, and customer response together.
Evidence limits
The booking flow was simulated and the core comparison was small (N = 100). The real monetary decision provides a consequential outcome; a live booking test will measure ticket purchases and the result across audiences, charitable causes, and checkout designs.
Data availability
The de-identified outcome tables supporting this page are included in the public project repository. They remove direct identifiers, location data, free text, and the participating airline's name.