National identity and international giving: Irish adults' accounts of charitable behaviour

Abstract

Research on helping behaviour has emphasized the importance of the group and particularly the nation in establishing the norms and boundaries of emergency helping. Less attention has been paid to the role of the national group in longer-term routine helping such as charitable giving. This is particularly important given recent research on intergroup helping which points to the impact of power relations on willingness of national groups to give and receive aid. The present research examines people's accounts of charitable giving in their day-to-day lives in Ireland, a country which has recently undergone a transformation in economic development and international relations. Discursive analysis of five focus groups with 14 Irish university students illustrates how participants proactively invoke national identity to account for giving or withholding charity. Our findings demonstrate how Irish national identity can be strategically and flexibly used to manage participants' local moral identity in the light of Ireland's changing international relations and in particular how participants display concerns to be seen to intend 'autonomous' rather than 'dependency'-oriented helping. The findings suggest that both national identity and international relations provide resources for individuals negotiating the complex demands and concerns surrounding charitable giving.

Emergent social identity and observing social support predict social support provided by survivors in a disaster: Solidarity in the 2010 Chile earthquake

“…We will finish by highlighting three areas where future work to develop the analysis presented here is needed. First, another well‐established predictor of helping behaviour is national identification (Lay, González, & Cortés, ; Stevenson & Manning, ). During disasters, an increase, or a heightened salience, in national identification can occur (Gabrielsen et al, ).…”

Responding to natural disasters: Examining identity and prosociality in the context of a major earthquake

“…When primed with a European identity, as opposed to a British identity, students showed an increased willingness to help in response to European disasters, but not to South American disasters. Similarly, Irish students cited national identity as one base from which decisions about help giving were made, and expressed a preference towards helping fellow Irish citizens before giving help to those abroad (Stevenson & Manning, 2010), and students in New Zealand preferred helping their own ingroup members before giving help to others (Dalton, Madden, Chamberlain, Carr, & Lyons, 2008). Additionally, people who feel stronger place attachment to their home or nation (e.g., Lewicka, 2011) may be more likely to take action in response to a disaster (Scannell & Gifford, 2017;Tagliacozzo, 2015).…”

Charity begins at home? Setting a future research agenda for national identity and charitable ethnocentrism

“…Elsewhere, it has been argued by Hall, Jones, Andrews and Cridland (2013) that many donors prefer the notion of helping local charities because it offers them the chance to contribute to their own communities, and they can view the impact first hand and can be more confident that the money will not be wasted on marketing or administrative work. Indeed, Stevenson and Manning (2010) have suggested that donors may potentially perceive local charities as using donations more wisely.…”

“…For example, in Australia, negative attitudes towards offering ODA to Indonesia were partly motivated by fears that it may one day pose a military threat (Hull, 1988). It has also been argued that countries are perceived less worthy of donations if political leaders in said countries are seen as the cause of the problem (Radley & Kennedy, 1992) or if the country was perceived powerful and wealthy enough to resolve problems itself (Stevenson & Manning, 2010). For example, the UK's recent decision to cut ODA to India followed intense media criticism for allocating resources to a country that funded its own space programme (Riley-Smith, 2016).…”

“…Among these, he identified that donors value a sense of fit with prospective beneficiaries; those individuals perceived similar to the donor are typically deemed more worthy of his or her support (Sargeant & Woodliffe, 2007). One criteria for identifying said 'fit' is through membership of national or ethnic groups, which despite its obvious relevance in donor decision making (Burgoyne, Young, & Walker, 2005) remains an area characterised by limited empirical investigation (Stevenson & Manning, 2010).…”