The Effect of Sense of Community Responsibility on Residents’ Altruistic Behavior: Evidence from the Dictator Game

Abstract

Understanding the new mechanism of altruistic behavior is pivotal to people’s health and social development. Despite the rich literature on altruism, this is the first study exploring the association between the sense of community responsibility (SOC-R) and altruistic behavior by repeated dictator games. Data were gathered from 95 residents (30% male; M age = 33.20 years). Demographic variables, money motivation, and SOC-R were measured. The results revealed that there was a significant positive correlation between SOC-R and altruistic behavior, and SOC-R had a positive predictive effect on residents’ altruistic behavior. With the increasing of the number of tasks assigned, the level of residents’ altruistic behavior gradually decreased. There was a significant difference in money allocation between the groups with high and low levels of SOC-R. The level of altruistic behavior in the group with a high level of SOC-R was significantly higher than that in the the group with a low level of SOC-R. Findings from the present study highlighted the potential value of strengthening residents’ SOC-R in the improvement of altruism. Implications and directions for future research were also discussed.

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

“…There is a great body of literature finding evidence for a relationship between perceived responsibility and prosocial behavior. Whereas different approaches emphasize different aspects of responsibility, results are consistent in that prosocial behavior increases when people perceive a high degree of moral obligation, duty, or personal responsibility to help others (e.g., Amato et al., 1984 ; Brañas-Garza, 2007 ; Bruttel and Stolley, 2018 ; D'Antonio, 2014 ; Erlandsson et al., 2015 ; Schwartz and Clausen, 1970 ; Yang et al., 2020 ). In the present study, we mainly focus on the individuals’ perception of his/her own responsibility to show prosocial behavior.…”

“…Specifically, we showed that levels of prosocial behavior were associated with the giver's responsibility and the recipients' vulnerability to COVID-19, which is in line with previous research. Previous research (e.g., D'Antonio et al, 2014;Amato et al, 1984;Fisher & Ma, 2014;Kappes et al 2018;Yang et al, 2020) using comparable methods found large effects (d = 0.94 to d = 1.25) of giver's responsibility to help on prosocial behavior and moderate effects (d = 0.31 and d = 0.57) of the recipients' vulnerability on prosocial behavior. Our effects (d = 1.01 and d = 0.43) fall in these ranges of effect sizes, speaking for the generalizability of these effects to the pandemic (in direction and size).…”

Prosocial behaviours under collective quarantine conditions. A latent class analysis study during the 2020 COVID‐19 lockdown in Italy

“…From a psychosocial perspective, prosocial behaviours have been explained using constructs revolving around helpers' sense of responsibility for others (Yang et al, 2020 ). At a community level, responsibility towards others has been understood as sense of community responsibility (SoC‐R), which refers to the feeling of responsibility towards other community members and the community as a whole, that enhances individuals' motivation to help (Nowell & Boyd, 2010 ; Nowell & Boyd, 2014 ).…”

Developing a sentence level fairness metric using word embeddings

“…If they reject it, neither of them receives any of the money. A study by Yang et al ( 2020 ) found a positive correlation between a sense of community responsibility (SOC-R) and altruism behaviour (AB). Their regressions demonstrated a linear relationship, with SOC-R as the predictor and AB as outcome.…”