The Impact of Private Entrepreneur’s Religious Beliefs and Political Identity on the Corporate Philanthropy Donations

Abstract

Corporate philanthropy donations act as one of the important ways for enterprises to fulfill their social responsibilities. There are many factors that influence corporate charitable donations, and one of which is the entrepreneur's personal characteristics. This study discusses the influence of private entrepreneurs’ religious beliefs on corporate philanthropy, and further analyzes the regulating effect of entrepreneurs’ political identity on religious beliefs and corporate philanthropy. Through face-to-face in-depth interviews with 11 charitable entrepreneurs in 11 cities of 10 provinces in China, applying continuous analytic induction, combined with NVIVO software for three-level coding, it can be concluded that the religious beliefs of private entrepreneurs have no absolute effect on corporate philanthropy, but entrepreneurs with religious beliefs are all keen on philanthropy; and their political identities of having a positive impact on corporate philanthropy. For entrepreneurs without political identities, their religious beliefs have a positive impact on corporate philanthropy, while for entrepreneurs with political identities, there is a stronger positive correlation between their religious beliefs and corporate philanthropy. The research results help to further understand the motivation for charitable donations of private enterprises, and play a practical guiding role in promoting the development of private corporate philanthropy.