Altruistic Giving Toward Refugees: Identifying Factors That Increase Citizens' Willingness to Help

Abstract

Over the past decade, the world has faced an unprecedented refugee crisis. The large number of incoming refugees represents a challenge for host societies and its citizens triggering reactions from a supportive welcome to brusque rejection and hostile behavior toward refugees. In a pre-registered study, we investigated factors that could promote altruistic behavior in fully incentivized one-shot Dictator Game toward various receiver groups including refugees. We find that host citizens behave more altruistically toward refugees and other receiver groups if they (a) share a local identity with them (i.e., live in the same city), and (b) perceive them to be close (to the self) and warm-hearted. Moreover, citizens that are (c) generally more prosocial and hold a more left-wing political orientation are more willing to give. Unexpectedly, from a theoretical point of view, altruistic giving toward refugees was not influenced in the predicted direction by a shared student identity, competition and perceived income differences (although the latter effect was significant when considering all receiver groups). For shared student identity we even observe a reduction of altruistic behavior, while the opposite effect was predicted. We discuss implications for public policies for successful refugee helping and integration.

Prosocial behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany. The role of responsibility and vulnerability

“…It has repeatedly been shown that prosocial behavior depends on characteristics of the giver, the recipient, and their interpersonal relation. For instance, cross-cultural studies report that prosocial behavior depends on the individuals' social and political orientation (i.e., characteristic of the giver; Hellmann et al, 2021), the recipients' national background (i.e., characteristic of the recipient; Fiedler et al, 2018) or the similarity between givers and recipients (i.e., interpersonal characteristic; Froehlich et al, 2021). Furthermore, it has been shown that prosocial behavior increases with the recipient's socio-economic vulnerability in relation to the giver (economic inequality; Dorrough & Glöckner, 2016) and decreases with psychological distance towards (unidentified) recipients (Kogut et al, 2018), which can both be considered interpersonal characteristics.…”

Love thy (Ukrainian) neighbour: Willingness to help refugees depends on their origin and is mediated by perceptions of similarity and threat

“…Similarly, Hellmann et al. (2021) found that when participants were asked to allocate money between themselves and different groups, perceived closeness was positively associated with donations towards refugees, and De Coninck (2020) found that when asked which groups of immigrants should be allowed to come and live in the country, people were more positive towards European than non‐European refugees. Finally, when examining prejudice against different groups, with samples from four European countries, Bruneau et al.…”

“…In a field experiment conducted in Switzerland, Zhang et al (2019) found that an immigrant who was less fluent in German was perceived as being of lower status and was less likely to receive help when asking to borrow a telephone. Similarly, Hellmann et al (2021) found that when participants were asked to allocate money between themselves and different groups, perceived closeness was positively associated with donations towards refugees, and De Coninck (2020) found that when asked which groups of immigrants should be allowed to come and live in the country, people were more positive towards European than non-European refugees. Finally, when examining prejudice against different groups, with samples from four European countries, Bruneau et al (2018) found that Muslim refugees were among the most dehumanized groups.…”

“…From a social identity perspective (social identity theory; Tajfel & Turner, 1979), differentiating the in‐group from relevant outgroups serves to maintain a positive social identity, and people are thus motivated to favour in‐group members over outgroup members. In effect, in‐group members or those perceived as similar can expect preferential treatment in form of a higher degree of altruistic behaviours (Bilancini et al., 2020; Froehlich et al., 2021; Hellmann et al., 2021; also see Balliet et al., 2014 for a meta‐analysis). Indeed, a higher perceived similarity between an immigrant group and the majority generally corresponds to more positive attitudes (Espinosa et al., 2018).…”

“…Although there is a relatively large literature on correlates of prejudice towards refugees in general, most studies (e.g. Hellmann et al., 2021; Jacobs, 2021) lack comparisons between different refugee groups, and there is limited knowledge about whether people's willingness to help refugees are contingent on their origin (Cowling et al., 2019). Hence the present study aims to examine whether willingness to help and to hire refugees from an ongoing conflict is contingent on their origin using a between‐subjects design where refugee origin was randomized.…”