- Browse by Author
Browsing by Author "Wilhelm, Mark O."
Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Altruistic and Joy-of-Giving Motivations in Charitable Behavior(2002) Ribar, David C.; Wilhelm, Mark O.This study theoretically and empirically examines altruistic and joy-of-giving motivations underlying contributions to charitable activities. The theoretical analysis shows that in an economy with an infinitely large number of donors, impurely altruistic preferences lead to either asymptotically zero or complete crowd-out. The paper then establishes conditions on preferences that are sufficient to yield zero crowd-out in the limit. These conditions are fairly weak and quite plausible. An empirical representation of the model is estimated using a new 1986–92 panel of donations and government funding from the United States to 125 international relief and development organizations. Be-sides directly linking sources of public and private support, the econ-ometric analysis controls for unobserved institution-specific factors, institution-specific changes in leadership, year-to-year changes in need, and expenditures by related organizations. The estimates show little evidence of crowd-out from either direct public or related private sources. Thus, at the margin, donations to these organizations appear to be motivated solely by joy-of-giving preferences. In addition to ad-dressing the basic question of motives behind charitable giving, the results help explain the existing disparity between econometric and experimental crowd-out estimates.Item Changes in Religious Giving Reflect Changes in Involvement: Age and Cohort Effects in Religious Giving, Secular Giving, and Attendance(4/11/2007) Wilhelm, Mark O.; Rooney, Patrick M.; Tempel, Eugene R.We present two patterns over time in religious giving, secular giving, and religious service attendance. The first pattern describes the prewar cohort (born 1924–1938) as they aged between middle adulthood (ages 35–49) and their senior years (ages 62–76). The second pattern compares the baby boom cohort (born 1951–1965) in middle adulthood to the middle adulthood of the prewar cohort. We present patterns for all families as well as separately for Catholic and Protestant families using data from three sources. The prewar cohort increased their religious giving and attendance as they aged, but—compared to the prewar cohort in middle adulthood—baby boomers give less than expected to religion and attend less. Baby boomer giving is noticeably less-than-expected and attendance noticeably lower among Catholic boomers, but less so among Protestant boomers. We argue that together these patterns are evidence that changes in religious giving reflect changes in religious involvement.Item Helping but Not Always Empathic: Helping Behavior, Dispositional Empathic Concern, and the Principle of Care(8/25/2006) Bekkers, Rene; Wilhelm, Mark O.This research investigates the relative strength of dispositional empathic concern and a moral principle to care about others as correlates of helping behavior. The empathy–helping and care–helping relationships are investigated using data from the General Social Survey, a nationally representative random sample of the U.S. adult population. Thirteen helping behaviors are investigated. The results show that the care–helping relationship is stronger than the empathy–helping relationship for most helping behaviors, and that the empathy–helping relationship is mediated by the principle of care.