The influence of wealth on philanthropy: A cross-regional study

Abstract

Even in situations when welfare state budgets can be considered generous, many socially responsible, beneficial activities remain that cannot survive without the financial support of private individual or corporate donors. The article seeks an answer to questions of to what extent the willingness to donate one’s own money depends on wealth and income, and what the role of other socio-cultural factors is. The data about the amount of private and corporate donations in particular regions of the Czech Republic in the period of the years 2011–2015 is compared with data about the regional economic prosperity and income. The regression analysis results show that it was only possible to explain to certain level the amount of donations by the rate of the wealth of firms and individuals in particular regions. In case of the companies, it is a medium-strong correlation, while the correlation is strong in terms of individuals. Particularly in terms of the corporate donation, the willingness to donate is significantly related also with other, non-economic factors in the region.

Microregional patterns of corporate philanthropy: the role of economic structure and regional determinants

“…Presence of corporate headquarters increases local CP (Mohan & Breeze 2016). Finally, firms with regionalized operations donate more at regional level than globally integrated firms (Rugman & Verbeke 2004;Fuchsová et al 2018).…”

“…There is a positive relationship between regional economic performance and CP. (Marshall et al 2018); (Fuchsová et al 2018) Position in the urban hierarchy…”

“…Charitable giving is more likely to be successful in prospering regions with a dense network of donors and charitable organisation, some authors suggest a positive relationship between regional economic performance and CP (Wolpert 1995;Marshall et al 2018;Fuchsová et al 2018). Mill ( 1848) argued that there is a (spatial) mismatch between the distribution of charitable resources and social needs (see also Mohan & Breeze 2016 for testing).…”

“…Hána & Černý (2017) or Černý (2018) documented spatially highly uneven distribution of donations provided by the Czech energetic company CEZ Group, concentrated in municipalities in the immediate proximity of its power plants. Fuchsová et al (2018) found a relationship between regional economic performance and CP. Tetřevová et al (2017) did not cope specifically with the geography, but proposed valuable case studies of CP in industries with high social/environmental externalities: chemicals, explosives, alcohol, tobacco, and gambling (see also Gurská & Valová 2013 for evaluation of CP in mining).…”

“…Tetřevová et al (2017) did not cope specifically with the geography, but proposed valuable case studies of CP in industries with high social/environmental externalities: chemicals, explosives, alcohol, tobacco, and gambling (see also Gurská & Valová 2013 for evaluation of CP in mining). While the above mentioned authors deal primarily with the regional/industry case studies or focus at the NUTS3 level (Fuchsová et al 2018), we analyse CP at the level of the so-called municipalities with extended powers (further only "microregions"), administrative units roughly corresponding with nodal regions. This allows for a detailed analysis and testing of selected factors of CP at a (micro)regional level: population size and position in the settlement hierarchy, regional economic performance and structure, religiosity and social capital.…”