Religiosity and prosocial behavior at national level.

Abstract

Given the importance of religion for most countries and the large number of religious people in the world, the beneficial effects of religions have received increasing research interest. To date, a large body of literature supports the religious prosociality hypothesis, but there are still controversies. Drawing on worldwide databases from World Values Surveys (WVS) and World Giving Index (WGI), this study conducted national-level analyses to throw new light on these controversies. Results showed that: (a) national religiosity was not related to WGI and time volunteering, but was positively related to helping a stranger and negatively related to donating money. (b) Gross domestic product (GDP) per capita moderated the relationship between national religiosity and WGI, donation money, volunteering time, and helping a stranger. In less affluent countries, religion functioned efficiently in promoting prosocial behavior. However, in economically developed countries its function may have been substituted by other factors related to social development and civilization. This study suggests that economic factors may be the solution of the religion engagement paradox.

Indulgence and Long Term Orientation Influence Prosocial Behavior at National Level

“…If a country had missing data in the 2016 WGI, the missing value was replaced by the average score of the years available during 2010–2015. Previous studies showed that WGI can be used as a reliable and valid measure of prosocial behavior (e.g., Smith, 2015; Guo et al, 2018). …”

“…Based on previous findings that religion and economic factors (Luria et al, 2015; Guo et al, 2018) also influence country-level prosocial behavior (HDI; a composite statistic of life expectancy, education, and per capita income indicators), and religion (national religiosity) were used as control variables. National religiosity was taken from Guo et al (2018).…”

“…National religiosity was taken from Guo et al (2018). Based on WVS, they measured the religiosity of 96 countries across the world in terms of church attendance, prayer, deity importance, religion importance, and the proportion of religious people.…”

“…Country-level differences in prosocial behavior and its influential factors have been investigated by recent studies, such as economic factors (Luria et al, 2015), religiosity (Guo et al, 2018), and perceived corruption and interpersonal trust (Smith, 2015). Apart from these findings, a handful of studies showed that national culture values can robustly account for country-level variance in prosocial behavior above economy and human development factors.…”

Does Religion Hinder Creativity? A National Level Study on the Roles of Religiosity and Different Denominations

“…Previous literature suggests that different religions/denominations have dissimilar effects on prosocial behaviors ( Prouteau and Sardinha, 2015 ), trust ( Dingemans and Ingen, 2015 ), and entrepreneurship ( Dana, 2009 ). National economic situation has been found to have a moderating effect on the relationship between religion and outcomes, such as values ( Saroglou et al, 2004 ) and prosociality ( Guo et al, 2018 ). We speculated that the different findings on religion–creativity relationship and the paradox between rapid development and numerous religious populations can be accounted for by the dissimilar effects of religious denominations, as well as the moderation effect of economy.…”