The Global Study of Philanthropic Behavior
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RESEARCH PAPERS
The Global Study of Philanthropic Behavior Pamala Wiepking1,2
Accepted: 21 September 2020 The Author(s) 2020
Abstract While there is apparent evidence that individual philanthropic behavior and the motivations for this behavior are at least to some extent universal, there is also evidence that people across the world do not equally display this behavior. In this conceptual article, I explore how we can study philanthropic behaviors from a global perspective. I contend that the macro-level study of philanthropy is underdeveloped, because of three problems intrinsic to the study of global philanthropy: problems with geographical orientation, connotations and definitions. As a first step to overcome these problems, I suggest the use of the term generosity behavior over philanthropic behavior, as this term appears more inclusive of the multitude of definitions and connotations across cultures. I conclude by formulating a collaborative research agenda for a more inclusive study and understanding of global generosity behavior, focused on generating publicly accessible knowledge and informing policy. Keywords Philanthropy Generosity Giving Comparative study
Selections of this manuscript are based on Pamala Wiepking’s keynote at the ninth conference of the European Research Network on Philanthropy, July 4, 2019, Basel, Switzerland. & Pamala Wiepking [email protected]; [email protected] 1
IU Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, Indianapolis University Hall Suite 3000, 301 University Blvd, Indianapolis, IN 46202-5146, USA
2
Center for Philanthropic Studies, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1081, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Across cultures, people display a wide range of philanthropic behaviors, including cooperating in public good games (Henrich et al. 2004), benefitting others through volunteering (Ruiter and De Graaf 2006), giving money (Borgonovi 2008) and helping strangers (Bennett and Einolf 2017). Research thus shows that philanthropic behavior is—at least to some extent—universal. Research across different disciplines also supports the idea that there is some universality in the individual motivations for this behavior. Aknin et al. (2013) show that people across cultures experience a ‘‘warm glow’’ of giving. This is supported by the recent meta-analyses of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies on altruistic and strategic decisions to give by Cutler and Campbell-Meiklejohn (2019): When contributing to others, areas in the brain related to reward processing light up. In another recent meta-analyses, Thielmann, Spadaro and Balliet (2020) show the influence of personality traits on prosocial behavior and conclude that traits related to the unconditional concern of others’ welfare (such as social value orientation, altruism, concern for others and empathy) are more strongly correlated with prosocial behavior in economic games. However, research also shows large variation across countries and cultures in different types of philanthropic behaviors. Take as an examp
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