Effects of the Subjective Class Consciousness and Social Capital on Donation Behavior

Abstract

The main purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of the subjective class consciousness and social capital on donation behavior. Donation is a typical pro-social behavior and affected by the subjective perception of individual status of donor as much as that of objective socioeconomic one. It is assumed in this paper that the level of class status a person perceives is likely to influence the degree of participation in giving behavior. In addition, a concept of social network with its size and type is introduced as subordinate concept of social capital. The analysis is focused on the effects of these variables on donation behavior. Micro-data from Social Survey 2011 conducted by Statistics Korea is analyzed. ANOVA and regression analysis show that the level of individual perception on his or her socioeconomic status, the relative number of organizational membership and the degree of altruism that the participating organization pursue exert a significant effect on the frequency of donation. This relationship is found to be statistically significant, after controlling for the effects of individual demographic characteristics and objective indicators of socioeconomic status. This paper has a particular significance in that it tries to expand the extent of explanatory variables from individual feature and motivation to the social context and environment, and thus verify with empirical evidence its causal structure.