Age, frequency of volunteering, and Present-Hedonistic time perspective predict donating items to people in need, but not money to combat COVID-19 during lock-down

Abstract

Restrictions due to COVID-19 necessitated staying at home, but in some cases, encouraged charitable behavior, e.g., donating items to people in need (e.g., clothes, food), or money to support combatting COVID-19. Drawing on the previous findings regarding helping during disastrous situations and roles of time perspective in helping behaviors, the study tested the predictive value of age, gender, previous volunteering, altruistic social value orientation, and time perspectives of donating items to people in need or money to combat COVID-19. The study is pioneering in terms of including time perspectives as individual differences which might contribute to making donations during COVID-19 circumstances. The study was questionnaire-based and conducted online in the eighth week of social distancing in Poland. 150 young adults (age 18–35) took part in the study. Results of multivariable logistic regression analysis indicated that age, frequency of volunteering before the epidemic, and Present-Hedonistic time perspective predict donating items to people in need, but none of the tested variables predicted donating money to combat COVID-19. The findings suggest that charitable behavior, especially in the context of extraordinary social situations, needs to be treated as a multifaceted phenomenon. The study indicates that a Present-Hedonistic time perspective would be a promising individual difference to test in future studies on prosociality.

Volunteerism in the last year as a moderator between empathy and altruistic social value orientation: an exploratory study

“…Taking into account the conceptual difference between forms of helping – volunteerism (more long-term-oriented, requiring an effort) and sharing money (more short-term-oriented, requiring less personal effort) – it might be hypothesized that the relationship between empathy and altruism as measured by the SVO decomposed game measure might not be observable among volunteers. For instance, in a recent study by Nowakowska (2021) , altruistic SVO was not related to frequency of volunteering in the year preceding the study. Moreover, research by Jasielska and Rajchert (2020) indicated a lack of significant correlation between SVO as measured with a decomposed game and communion, as well as a significant negative relationship between SVO and agency.…”

Antecedents of physicians' intentions to engage in digital volunteering work: an extended technology acceptance model (TAM) approach

“…The emergence of COVID-19 encouraged voluntary behavior among citizens (Pirani et al. , 2022), as some donated clothes, food, goods or cash to people in need (Nowakowska, 2021), it was also a major reason for adopting digital volunteering. For example, the United Nations launched an online platform for volunteering called the “Unified Volunteering Platform” on 1 October 2021.…”

“…In the same way, we believe that the adoption of digital volunteering can (1) be a suitable solution to the problem of exposure to epidemic risks and (2) help support the health system and contributes to reducing the severity of the health crisis. Factually, participation in volunteering can be influenced by several factors such as conscientiousness and skill variety (Kossowska and Laguna, 2018), social recognition and government support (Wang et al, 2011), volunteers management (Pirani et al, 2022) and previous volunteer experiences (Niebuur et al, 2018;Nowakowska, 2021). Silva et al (2018) found that career/learning rewards and altruistic motivations are the most encouraging motives for online volunteerism.…”

Experience together online and help each other offline: An exploration of social media co-experience and social identification as predictors of mutual aid behavior during the COVID-19 lockdown

“…In the face of large environmental changes and the lack of needs, people generally rely on social networks and respond to dire situations through cooperation and prosocial behaviors 12,13 . Therefore, mutual aid behaviors are typically observed during natural disasters and public crises 14 , which use a strengths-based and holistic approach to reduce per capita risk, realize resources distribution, and benefit another person 15,16 .…”