Traditional and Health-Related Philanthropy: The Role of Resources and Personality

Abstract

I study the relationships of resources and personality characteristics to charitable giving, postmortem organ donation, and blood donation in a nationwide sample of persons in households in the Netherlands. I find that specific personality characteristics are related to specific types of giving: agreeableness to blood donation, empathic concern to charitable giving, and prosocial value orientation to postmortem organ donation. I find that giving has a consistently stronger relation to human and social capital than to personality. Human capital increases giving; social capital increases giving only when it is approved by others. Effects of prosocial personality characteristics decline at higher levels of these characteristics. Effects of empathic concern, helpfulness, and social value orientations on generosity are mediated by verbal proficiency and church attendance.

Generosity and Philanthropy: A Literature Review

“…Using a two stage least squares regression model, two studies still find a positive association between church attendance and giving (Lunn et al 2001;Sullivan 1985). Bekkers (2006b) found that empathy and verbal proficiency affects giving partly through church attendance.…”

“…Positive relations between philanthropy and level of education are found in most empirical studies that include education (Apinunmahakul & Devlin 2004;Banks & Tanner 1999;Bekkers 2003;2006b;Bekkers & De Graaf 2006;Bielefeld et al 2005;Brooks 2004;Brown 2005;Brown & Ferris 2007;Brown & Lankford 1992;Carroll et al 2006;Chang 2005a;Chua & Wong 1999;Duncan 1999;Eschholz & Van Slyke 2002;Feldman 2007;Gruber 2004;Houston 2006;Jones & Posnett 1991a;Kingma 1989;Lyons & Nivison-Smith 2006;Lyons & Passey 2005;Matsunaga 2006;McClelland & Kokoski 1994;Mesch et al 2006;Olson & Caddell 1994;Pharoah & Tanner 1997;Reece & Zieschang 1985;Reed & Selbee 2002;Rooney et al 2001;Schiff 1990;Schlegelmilch et al 1997a;Sokolowski 1996;Tiehen 2001;Todd & Lawson 1999;Van Slyke & Brooks 2005;Wiepking & Maas 2006;Wilhelm et al 2006;Yamauchi & Yokoyama 2005;Yavas et al 1981). Higher levels of education are also associated with giving a higher proportion of income …”

Daily Spiritual Experiences and Prosocial Behavior

“…Empathic concern, or ''the tendency to experience feelings of sympathy and compassion for those in need'' (Davis 1994:57), has been the subject of extensive study over the last 20 years, and numerous studies have found a connection between empathic concern and prosocial behaviors (Bekkers 2005(Bekkers , 2006Davis 1994;Davis et al 1999Davis et al , 2003Einolf 2010;Penner et al 1995;Penner and Finkelstein 1998;Penner 2002). One reason that daily spiritual experiences may cause individuals to help others is that they may encourage the development of empathy.…”

Philanthropic Fundraising of Higher Education Institutions: A Review of the Malaysian and Australian Perspectives

“…Therefore, an increasingly important and largely underdeveloped financial stream for public higher education institutions is philanthropy [6][7][8], that is donations from the general public to the universities for either specific or non-tagged purposes. Philanthropy is associated with the action of "expressing love to mankind" [9] and is often focused towards improving humanity rather than solely serving the needs of the poor. In the context of defining the action of giving to higher education, Cascione [10] stated:…”