Motivation and Charity: Mainstream versus Ethnic Giving?

초록

This study empirically examines how individual motivations impact on charitable donation practices—ethnic donation versus mainstream giving—observed among foreign-born Korean immigrants in California. It proposes three competing modes of motivations that can lead to donation, including rational (driven by the promotion of personal economic interests), institutional (driven by responding to social and institutional pressure), and civic duty (driven by desire to serve community). Based on a large scale Korean American Philanthropic Survey conducted in California, this study constructs a bivariate probit regression model to assess the impact of motivations on donation practices. The analytical findings show that immigrants with stronger institutional motivations toward charity are more likely to donate to ethnic organizations, while those with a stronger sense of civic duty toward charity have a strong tendency of donation to mainstream organizations. In addition, the correlation coefficient for rho indicates that interactive relationships between ethnic donation and mainstream donation practices are substitutes rather than complementary.