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Charitable Intent: A Moral or Social Construct? A Revised Theory of Planned Behavior Model

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Abstract

Given an increasing global need to elicit and stimulate charitable giving and in light of the limited social-psychological research on this subject, this study contributes to a better empirical understanding of the factors that underlie charitable giving (intentions). In contrast to previous research, it was hypothesized that moral norms rather than social norms are likely to play a significant role in the formation of charitable intentions. An extended Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) model was constructed in order to test the influence of six social-psychological variables on an individual’s intention to donate to charity. Respondents (N = 143) completed an online questionnaire about charitable behaviour that assessed the constructs of the revised model. The present study found support for the stated hypothesis: while social norms (both descriptive and prescriptive) did not explain any of the variance in intention, moral norms accounted for a significant amount of the overall variance and were in fact identified as the strongest (relative) predictor of charitable giving intentions. In addition to moral norms, ‘attitude’, ‘perceived behavioral control’ and ‘past behaviour’ were also identified as significant predictors. The findings in this study support a revised TPB model that accounts for nearly 70% of the explained variance in charitable intent. Implications for both theory and practice are discussed.

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Notes

  1. Of course, in some situations when it remains relatively unclear what the appropriate norm is, it is likely that people will look at others for clues (e.g., Festinger 1954).

  2. Even if some correlations (.61) are to be considered relatively high, an examination of the collinearity statistics revealed that each predictor fell within acceptable boundaries of tolerance (>.3) and the VIF coefficient (<5), ruling out any substantive multi-collinearity problems (O’Brien 2007).

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  1. Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change & The Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science, Clements Inn Passage, WC2A 2AZ, London, United Kingdom

    Sander van der Linden

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van der Linden, S. Charitable Intent: A Moral or Social Construct? A Revised Theory of Planned Behavior Model. Curr Psychol 30, 355–374 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-011-9122-1

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