Association between awareness of environmental consequences, materialism and environmental philanthropic behavior among potential online donors

Abstract

Despite its importance for conservation organizations, environmental philanthropic behavior that consists of donations of both money and time, has so far been an understudied phenomenon within pro-environmental behavior (1, 2). The decision to donate either money or time to conservation purposes may arise from different motivations that influence in the background. Motivations behind environmental philanthropic behavior may also differ from motivations regarding participation in other forms of pro-environmental behavior (2) or from motivations to donate to other charitable sectors. Nowadays numerous people are following conservation organizations´ social media channels, and thus form a new segment of potential donors. By conducting a questionnaire survey targeted to potential online donors (n=2079) we explored possible connections between egoistic, altruistic and biospheric awareness of environmental consequences and materialism and different forms of self-reported environmental philanthropic behavior. The respondents were also asked to allocate a 10c incentive gift to one of five real donation targets. We used logistic regressions and censored regression model to analyse the data. Roughly half of the respondents had donated in real life, and one fifth had volunteered to environmental causes. We found that respondents living in the countryside volunteered (i.e. donated time) more likely than urban dwellers, and respondents with higher income were more inclined to donate money than to volunteer. In addition, both biospheric and egoistic concerns were positively related to self-reported environmental philanthropic behavior, while the relationship between materialism and environmental philanthropic behavior was negative. Materialism was associated with preferring a charismatic (flagship) species when choosing a donation target in the choice experiment, whereas biospheric concerns were related to choosing a general donation to biodiversity conservation. Thus, our results highlight the importance of catering for the diverse motivations behind environmental philanthropic behavior in conservation marketing campaigns. Potential donors with egoistic concerns or living in rural settings could be offered possibilities to engage in voluntary work related to surrounding natural settings. Furthermore, while traditional flagship species seem to appeal to donors with materialistic values, donors with biospheric concerns form a segment that prefers targets with broader biodiversity benefits.

Key references

(1) Katz-Gerro, T., I. Greenspan, F. Handy, H. Y. Lee, and A. Frey. 2015.´Environmental philanthropy and environmental behavior in five countries: Is there convergence among youth?´ Voluntas 26(4): 1485-1509.

(2) Greenspan, I., F. Handy, and T. Katz-Gerro. 2012. ´Environmental philanthropy: Is it similar to other types of environmental behavior?´ Organization & Environment 25(2): 111-130.