Long Term Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Social Concerns

Abstract

While some local, temporary past crises have boosted overall charitable donations, there have been concerns about potential substitution effects that the Covid-19 pandemic might have on other social objectives, such as tackling climate change and reducing inequality. We present results from a donation experiment (n = 1, 762), with data collected between April 2020 and January 2021. We combine data from (i) an online donation experiment, (ii) an extended questionnaire including perceptions, actions, and motives on the Covid-19 pandemic, the climate crisis, and poverty, as well as charitable behavior and (iii) epidemiological data. The experimental results show that donations to diverse social concerns are partially substituted by donations to the Covid-19 fund; yet, this substitution does not fully replace all other social concerns. Over time we observe no systematic trend in charitable donations. In regards to the determinants of individual donations, we observe that women donate more, people taking actions against Covid-19 and against poverty donate more, while those fearing risks from poverty donate less. In addition, we observe that the population under consideration is sensitive to the needs of others, enhancing total donations for higher Covid-19 incidence. For donations to each charity, we find that trusting a given charitable organization is the strongest explanatory factor of donations.JEL: L3, D64, Q54, I3, D9

Exploring the relationship between exposure to COVID-19 and donations during the COVID-19 pandemic: The mediating roles of emotions and risk perception

“…Would people personally exposed to COVID-19 have a different donation pattern from those who are only locally exposed to it? Besides, most relevant research done in western countries ( McGuire et al, 2020 ; Blanco et al, 2021 ; Grimalda et al, 2021 ; Jin and Ryu, 2021 ; Zheng et al, 2021b ) has opposite results from research done in China ( Zheng et al, 2021a ; Li W. Q. et al, 2021 ; Li S. et al, 2021 ; Lee et al, 2021 ). Local exposure to COVID-19 was found to have a significant positive effect on donations in most western countries but not in China.…”

“…Third, our study aimed to reconcile previous conflicts on the effect of risk perception on donations. Previous research has arrived at opposite results in the effect of risk perception partly due to the use of different measurements of risk perception during the COVID-19 pandemic across studies (Blanco et al, 2021;Han et al, 2021;Li W. Q. et al, 2021). By only focusing on the health component of risk perception, we simplified the complexity of risk perception with the realization of its multifacetedness and raised caution regarding attempts to investigate risk perception as a single-sided concept.…”

“…For example, Grimalda et al (2021) showed that people were more likely to donate if their relatives, acquaintances, or themselves had been diagnosed with COVID-19. As for local exposure, research has also shown that the number of newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the local community has a significant positive relationship with donations ( Blanco et al, 2021 ). Outside the scope of the pandemic, a similar relationship was also observed in general donations and natural disasters.…”

“…The cognitive dimension of risk perception is associated with the possibility and the severity of consequences assessed from available information ( Bonnet et al, 2012 ). Under the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, previous research has used items including the estimated length of the pandemic, the perceived severity of the disease, the perceived risk of getting it, and the estimated impact of the pandemic on the socio-economic situation to measure risk perception ( Blanco et al, 2021 ). Considering studies on the risk perception of COVID-19, the majority of them focused on the effect of risk perception on promoting individuals’ health preventive measures ( Wise et al, 2020 ; Shabu et al, 2021 ).…”

“…Recent studies have examined the effect of exposure to COVID-19 on people’s donation behavior ( Blanco et al, 2021 ; Grimalda et al, 2021 ; Zheng et al, 2021b ). However, most research did not separate personal exposure and local exposure, which are two different kinds of experiences for individuals.…”