Toward an Inclusive Landscape of Informal and Formal Giving Behavior: With Voices from Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) and Indiana (USA)

Abstract

My dissertation explores an inclusive landscape of philanthropy by examining a range of informal and formal giving behaviors and their explicit and implicit motives to enhance our broad understanding of philanthropy. I focus on issues that were less emphasized in philanthropic studies, such as informal giving, the perspectives of people from the Global South (specifically Ethiopians), and implicit motivations. The dissertation is presented in a three-manuscript format. The first manuscript investigates informal giving through a systematic literature review, identifying key practices such as informal helping, mutual help systems, caregiving, and remittances. The driving reasons for informal giving include reciprocity, human and social capital, emotions, altruism, and other less focused reasons such as social media, crisis, and sense of duty. The study also highlights differences in gender and geographical location in informal giving practices. The second manuscript explores and compares the spectrum of informal and formal giving behaviors and motivations among Christian Ethiopians living in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and Indiana, US, focusing on Christians in the Protestant and Orthodox denominations. Using semi-structured Zoom and telephone interviews with 34 participants, the study reveals various informal giving practices, such as financial, in-kind, and emotional support to extended family, friends, neighbors, and strangers, as well as formal giving behaviors, including establishing NGOs, formal volunteering, and charitable donations. The research identifies explicit and implicit motivations for engaging in this spectrum of giving behaviors, such as religious beliefs, cultural heritage, parental teaching, being part of a church community, and affiliation implicit motivation. The study also identifies some variations in the understanding, practices and motivations for giving among participants in the two locations and denominations. The third manuscript investigates implicit motivations among Giving Pledge signatories using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) textual analysis of the pledge letters. It examines the primary three implicit motives: achievement, affiliation, and power. The results show that affiliation implicit motives are relatively more prevalent than achievement and power motives among the pledge signers. The study also explores how these implicit motivations associate with key demographic variables and philanthropic subsectors.