Moral Outpouring

Abstract

The 2010 BP oil spill is the largest human-caused disaster in U.S. history. Using nationally representative panel data measured before, during, and after the spill I find that rather than giving time and money to actual relief efforts, Americans responded primarily through dramatic increases in time and money given for environmental causes. This expands current understandings about how and why Americans respond to large-scale catastrophe. I argue that this phenomenon can be made sense of theoretically by focusing on the cultural context of "moral shock" precipitated by historic environmental harm and corporate negligence, both of which were amplified in the wake of the spill by national media. This heightened emotional climate interacted with Americans' empathetic identities, practices and habits, politics, and culture to produce different pathways to philanthropic engagement. Consistent with this argument, the results show that all four of these factors mattered for predicting generous behavior in this case, but did so at different points in time. I close by outlining the substantive and theoretical implications of my argument.