Altruistic Motives Research Articles

Pre-Service Teachers’ Narratives: Why Did I Decide to Become an English Language Teacher?

Choosing a major is one of the most important decisions in one’s life. Understanding the aspects that intervene in this decision contribute to a better understanding of main motivational forces of English as a Foreign Language pre-service teachers. This qualitative descriptive study examined the personal, professional, and social motivations and experiences of 40 English as a Foreign Language pre-service teachers in the Mexican context that affected their decision to become English language teachers. Using an open written narrative (Language Learning History) instrument, participants wrote stories that showed the main reasons for choosing English teaching as a major. The results showed that personal and professional aspects including biographical experiences, a perceived ability to learn and teach English as well as teacher preparation program experiences are the most influential in this decision along with altruistic and intrinsic motives.

When altruistic decisions shape egoistic motives: motivation shift in sequential charitable support

Prior studies of sequential moral behaviors suggest that when people believe they have made a moral decision (e.g. engaged in a prosocial act), subsequent decisions would be less moral. This paper investigates the motivation shift hypothesis, suggesting that people’s prosocial behavior is consistent when asked to make subsequent donations; however, their prosocial motivation is inconsistent. To test this hypothesis, two charitable message appeals were used: a message that focuses on the benefits to others (i.e. altruistic other-benefit) and a message that focuses on the donors’ benefits (i.e. egoistic self-benefit). In a pilot study and three experiments, this paper suggests that after agreeing to an altruistic charitable request, people are more generous if they see a self-benefit message appeal. We propose that consumers’ moral status plays a role which increases egoistic motivation in subsequent charitable decisions, following an altruistic charitable giving. This pattern is only observed when the subsequent request is asked by a different charity, as opposed to the same charity.

Content That Engages Your Customers: The Role of Brand Congruity and Promotions in Social Media

Every day, social network users worldwide spend an average of 1 hour and 47 minutes on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, and they forward online content to friends. Nonetheless, 87% of posts to brand Facebook pages go unanswered. To reduce this negative outcome and attract fans’ attention, companies post content that is not necessarily congruent with their brand and that contains promotion-based themes. The question is whether this strategy is effective in boosting rebroadcasting. The authors propose a conceptual framework that explains how two key post themes—congruency and promotions—influence consumers’ propensity to share and why. They validate it through a multimethod approach. First, the authors document the existence of the effect between congruency, promotions, and rebroadcasting by analyzing one year of posts for four leading brands. Second, the authors run a field experiment with Samsung Mobile. They find that the degree of congruency between online content and the brand positively affects the amount of rebroadcasting. Posts that include promotional incentives generate fewer shares, but this negative effect reverses when the post is congruent with the brand. Third, the authors conduct two online lab experiments to explain why this happens and show that fans’ reactance and altruistic motives play a central role.

The Career-building effect of volunteering in higher education

Nowadays the motives for volunteering are changing among higher education students, andbesides traditional altruistic motives, career-building motives also appear (the acquisitionof work experience and professional knowledge, professional development, networking,the presentation of voluntary work in the resume). In this paper, we use data from a surveyconducted in five Central and Eastern European countries (N=2,199) to examine through linearregression analysis the factors affecting the strength of career-building motives and to analysethrough a logistic regression model the determinants of whether or not volunteering is related to the field of study. Our hypotheses are formulated based on the literature. Our results showthat career-building motives are more pronounced among women and students who have aclose relationship with external friends outside the university, study outside Hungary, and studysomething other than engineering, computer science or science. Voluntary work is more likely tobe related to the field of study among teacher education students, students with an unfavourablefinancial situation, those who study in Romania, and those who have a close relationship withfaculty.

Toward Sustainable Couchsurfing: A Comparative Study on Hosting Motives and Behaviors between the USA and China

Couchsurfing has become a global phenomenon, and its sustainable development highly depends on hosts and their behavioral choice. However, there was seldom discussion on hosts’ motives and behaviors. This study aimed to identify the dimensions of motives and behaviors among CS hosts and explored the cultural differences between the US and Chinese hosts from the perspective of altruism. A total of 462 questionnaires (246 Americans and 216 Chinese) were collected from multiple sources. The findings reveal that CS hosts have definite altruistic motivations, namely relaxation and pleasure, socialization, knowledge enhancement, and escape, which are reflected in behaviors through hospitality, close interaction, daily life involvement, and trust establishment. CS should be a win-win situation both to the hosts and surfers in a nonmonetary way. Hosts are heterogeneous groups with significant cross-cultural differences between the US and Chinese samples.

The Influence of Socio-Cultural Factors on Oocyte Donors' Motivations and Disclosure Decisions

The study focuses on the motivations of Russian oocyte donors and the socio-cultural factors affecting these motivations. We conducted 16 semi-structured interviews with actual or prospective oocyte donors. All of them were patients of two fertility clinics located in the city of Yekaterinburg (Russia) planning to become oocyte donors within the period from 2 weeks to 3 months. We built a profile of a Russian oocyte donor: it is a 26-year-old married woman with at least one child; she has a secondary vocational education and a low income. All the women in our study displayed multiple motivations: apart from the interest in a financial reward and purely altruistic motivations, for many women the decisive factor is their desire to help their friends or relatives struggling with infertility. Interestingly, almost all of our respondents described their decision to donate as an attempt to move past a traumatic situation they once endured and to achieve closure by doing something really important and good. For many women, oocyte donation becomes a way to boost their self-esteem, to feel more significant and to promote their personal autonomy. As for barriers to donation, one of the most important is associated with the donors' unwillingness to make their identity known and to share this information even with their close circle of friends and relatives. For the majority of donors, anonymity is crucial. The disclosure of this information, in their view, will cause controversy in the donor's family and immediate circle of friends at present and will threaten their privacy in the future. The prospective donors are also concerned about the negative public attitudes or lack of understanding.

Intentions to Charge Electric Vehicles Using Vehicle-to-Grid Technology among People with Different Motivations to Save Energy

This article presents the results of a quantitative survey conducted on 4000 electric energy consumers in Spain, France, Italy, and Denmark. The results demonstrate differences in the effects of additional remuneration for using vehicle-to-grid (V2G) stations, depending on users’ reasons for saving electricity. Individuals with extrinsic financial motivations are sensitive to such incentives; the higher the remuneration is, the more willingness they demonstrate to use V2G. Although individuals with intrinsic (the desire to control spending) and ecological (caring for the environment) motivations are also interested in using V2G, no relationship can be observed between the sizes of the rewards and individuals’ desire to use the technology. Users are similarly encouraged by low (an extra 2.5% of energy for free) and high (an extra 20%) rewards. In contrast, individuals who display intrinsic general modesty (willingness to not waste things) motivations may even be discouraged: the higher the reward, the less interest they demonstrate in V2G. The article illustrates how different types of motivation can affect users’ interest in the innovative V2G concept, as well as underlining the importance of constructing intrinsic and altruistic motivations in the process of education.

Activités et motivations sous-jacentes : quelles relations avec le bien-être en confinement ?

IntroductionThe lockdown decided in France to prevent the spread of Covid-19 has temporarily modified the structure of daily activities. But, daily activities and the intention underlying actions influence well-being. ObjectivesThis study explored three variables hypothetically related to well-being under lockdown: the time spent on each activity, the motivation underlying the activity, and a potential moderating effect of time by motivation. MethodWeekly longitudinal tracking of a selection of activities potentially related to well-being in confined individuals was conducted over four weeks (N=461, 1213 total observations, April 16–May 20, 2020) and then processed by linear mixed model analyses. ResultsAt the activity level, the time spent giving social support, volunteering, physical activity, and meditation were positively associated with well-being. In addition, hedonic, eudemonic, and altruistic motivations were positively related to well-being, whereas extrinsic motivation was negatively related. Motivations were generally more associated to well-being than time spent on activities. Finally, interactions were found between time spent on activities and motivations, particularly with hedonic and altruistic motivations. ConclusionThis study provides insights into the distribution of activity time in confinement and the motivations associated with well-being in such a situation.

Coordinated decision-making boosts altruistic motivation-But not trust.

In the current study, we separately tested whether coordinated decision-making increases altruism and whether it increases trust. To this end, we implemented a paradigm in which participants repeatedly perform a coordinated decision-making task either with the same partner on every trial, or with a different partner on each trial. When both players coordinate on the same option, both are rewarded. In Experiment 1 (N = 52), participants were sometimes presented with tempting opportunities to defect. In Experiment 2 (N = 97), participants sometimes had to decide whether or not to trust that their partners had resisted such tempting opportunities. The results show that repeatedly coordinating with the same partner increased participants’ resistance to temptation (Experiment 1) but did not increase trust (Experiment 2). These findings support the hypothesis that coordinating with a partner increases altruistic motivation towards that partner; they do not support the hypothesis that coordinating boosts trust.

Understanding Generation Z’s Purchase Intention Towards Green Skincare Products in Kingston Upon Hull, United Kingdom

With Generation Z's increasing awareness of environmental problems, the rise of eco-friendly products is in high demand. Regarding skincare products, Generation Z is the newest consumer who enters the market with a decent knowledge of environmental problems—using the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB), product knowledge, price consciousness, and environmental knowledge. This paper aims to understand how far the awareness of Generation Z affects their purchase intention toward green skin care products. It also aims to know other key factors that affect the purchase intention of Generation Z and Generation Y. Furthermore, this paper also tested altruistic motivation and safety value affect attitude in the TPB model to test the purchase intention toward green skincare products. This paper hopes to help businesses that have Generation Z as their target market. Data gathered from 170 respondents in Kingston Upon Hull, United Kingdom, are examined against the research model using mixed methods that incorporate interviews and questionnaires. The result shows that altruistic motivation and safety value affect the attitude of the respondents towards their purchase intention of green skincare products. Moreover, subjective norms, perceived behaviour control, price consciousness, and environmental concern positively correlate with purchase intention towards green skincare products. However, product knowledge does not have a positive relationship with the purchase intention toward green skincare products due to many false advertisements conducted by companies claiming to be environmentally friendly products. The discoveries of this study present significant hypothetical and viable ramifications for customer green skincare products by ways of behaving.

Altruism As a Motive For Implementing Community Welfare Programs Through Islamic Philanthropic Funds: Case Study of Baitul Maal Hidayatullah Empowerment Actors

This paper will discuss the altruistic motives of actors implementing social welfare programs originating from the utilization of Islamic philanthropic funds during the issue of identity politics in Indonesia. This study is based on the motives that actors should have in implementing social welfare programs that utilize Islamic religious, philanthropic funds that uphold fair welfare. Altruism motives reflect the goals of Islamic philanthropy. The research was conducted using a qualitative approach with motive analysis using discourse texts because of interviews with informants from Hidayatullah and Baitul Maal Hidayatullah, which were connected to the theory to produce conclusions. The objects in this study are empowerment actors from religious-based social organizations, Hidayatullah. The research results explain that aspects of altruism, starting from the encouragement, actions, and goals of the actors in Baitul Maal Hidayatullah, have similarities that lead to community welfare so that altruism motives reflect what they do as implementing welfare programs based on the Islamic religion. Hidayatullah's foundation regarding practical politics that is not implemented is the basis for actors in carrying out the empowerment process for the community’s welfare.

Roses given, fragrance in hand: Charity law and corporate philanthropy—Evidence from a quasi‐natural experiment in China

AbstractThis study aims to investigate the impact of the 2016 Charity Law of the People's Republic of China on corporate philanthropy and its mechanism. Based on the difference‐in‐difference framework, empirical results show that the charity law has significantly increased the charitable donation level of firms with direct product–consumer contact rather than that in other firms. The additional analysis indicates that corporate self‐interest motives, but not altruistic motives, are ruled out as the mechanisms through which corporate philanthropy is delivered. Furthermore, a closer examination reveals that the charitable donation has not remarkably enhanced firms' operating performance, while the capital market gives these firms a higher valuation.

“My Incentive is THIS Relationship!”: Incentivizing Relationship Wellness Programs to Attract Sexual and Gender Minority Couples

Little research has been done on what motivates gender, romantic, and sexual minority (GRSM) couples to attend relationship wellness programs or what incentives they find appealing. For this study, 18 participants in dyadic partnerships responded to questions about their motivations to participate in a brief relationship wellness program as well as what financial incentives held the most appeal. All nine couples shared that they were motivated to do the wellness program to contribute to research for the GRSM community, suggesting that altruistic motivations are particularly relevant to GRSM couples. In regard to financial incentives, gifts that supported their relationship health, such as a gift card for a meal out together, held the strongest appeal. The results in this preliminary study may assist in refining incentives and other strategies to engage these often hard-to-reach couples.

Lived experience with sickle cell disease: Predictors of altruistic participation in clinical research

Researchers have found that research altruism motivates research participation, but little is known about what aspects of lived experience motivate this socially focused altruistic participation when participation emerges at the intersection of illness, identity, and injustice. This study examines adults living with sickle cell disease (n = 235) in the United States enrolled in the INSIGHTS clinical research study to investigate what aspects of the sickle cell disease lived experience, understood here as pain and illness perception, are associated with reporting subsidiary and primary altruistic motivations for participating in clinical research. Results from two binary logistic regressions indicate that pain frequency is positively associated with greater odds of reporting subsidiary altruistic motivations, and pain frequency and pain severity are positively associated with greater odds of citing primary altruistic motivations. Conversely, pain interference and illness perception are associated with lower odds of reporting primary altruistic motivations. These results reveal that for this racialized population, participation, although overwhelmingly altruistic, is rooted in an experience of persistent pain. Researchers must disentangle measures of lived experience in order to better understand what factors underlie and prevent participation.

Altruism Sustains the Village Model: How Motivations to Join a Village for Older Adults Predict Long-Term Membership

ABSTRACT A Village is a membership-driven organization based on neighbors helping neighbors age in place. Many Villages express difficulty maintaining membership and have concerns about sustainability. Drawing on socioemotional selectivity theory, we used qualitative and quantitative data from a representative survey of members of ShareCare (N = 91), the first known Village founded in 1994, to 1) identify members’ motivations for joining ShareCare, and 2) examine the relationship between motivations for joining ShareCare and being a long-term member. Qualitative data revealed three motivations for joining ShareCare: instrumental, social, and altruistic. Long-term membership was operationalized as 8 years or more. Logistic regression models indicated that people with altruistic motivation were more likely to be long-term members compared to members without altruistic motivation. Instrumental and social motivations were not associated with long-term membership. Our findings inform recruitment and retention of members in Villages, and member-driven organizations for older adults more broadly.

The PSICHE framework for sustainable consumption and future research directions

PurposeConsidering the relevance of understanding what influences environmentally sustainable consumer choices, the present study aims to examine and synthesize the key determinants factors from literature and outline a new conceptual framework for explaining green purchasing behaviors (GPBs).Design/methodology/approachA bibliometric analysis was conducted on 161 articles extracted from Web of Science and Scopus databases, which were systematically evaluated and reviewed, and represent the current GPB knowledge base. Content analysis, science mapping and bibliometric analysis techniques were applied to uncover the major theories and constructs from the state-of-the-art.FindingsThe evolving debate between altruistic and self-interest consumer motivations reveals challenges for rational-based theories, as most empirical applications are not focused on buying behaviors, but instead either on pro-environmental (non-buying) activities or on buying intentions. From the subset of leading contributions and emerging topics, nine thematic clusters are unveiled in this investigation, which were combined to create the new PSICHE framework with the purpose of predicting GPB: (P)roduct-related factors, (S)ocial influences, (I)ndividual factors, (C)oncerns about the environment, (H)abits and (E)motions.Practical implicationsBy uncovering the multiple intervening factors in GPB decision processes, this study will assist practitioners and academics to move forward on how to foster more sustainable consumer behaviors.Originality/valueThe present study provides readers a summary of an unprecedentedly broad collection of papers, from which the key themes are categorized, the domain's intellectual structure is captured and an actionable framework for enhancing the understanding GPB is proposed. Four new thrust areas and a set of future research questions are included.

CSR communication and international marketing: Insights from the COVID-19 pandemic

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to analyze the corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication of the Fortune top-100 companies during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Specifically, the authors examine the messages of international companies' CSR communication to customers during the pandemic, focusing particularly on the companies' posts on Twitter. In addition to identifying what international companies communicate, the authors determine the motives of companies' COVID-19-related CSR communication as well as how companies strategically approach CSR communication.Design/methodology/approachUsing Nvivo, the authors carried out content analysis of the COVID-19-related tweets of the Fortune top-100 companies using Twitter's ‘advanced search’ tool. The analysis included tweets posted between 1 February 2020 and September 2021, a period that represents the peak of the pandemic.FindingsStudy findings indicate that COVID-19-related CSR responses of international companies are driven by commitment to organizational values, attainment of recognition for timely response to COVID-19, altruistic motives to combat COVID-19 and congruence with social movements that create expectations from customers to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. Most companies adopt a response strategy to CSR communication, by informing customers of their COVID-19 responses in relation to several issues such as alterations in companies' processes and the impacts of the pandemic on health.Practical implicationsThe study suggests that the CSR practices of companies should be strategically embedded in organizations' international marketing plans and not remain just on-off responses to crises should marketing-related benefits be obtained. Several recommendations are made to strengthen companies' adoption of a proactive, engagement-oriented approach to CSR communication.Originality/valueThe CSR communication of international companies during external crises has not been sufficiently studied in relation to international marketing, as most studies considered internal corporate crises. Focusing on an external crisis (COVID-19 pandemic) with global impacts, this study advances existing knowledge on international companies' CSR communication to their customers. Additionally, this study offers new insights on the role of integrated, coordinated and consistent CSR messages and strategies, which are targeted to the needs and expectations of domestic and international customers in response to COVID-19 pandemic.

Motive perception pathways to the release of personal information to healthcare organizations

BackgroundThe goal of the study is to assess the downstream effects of who requests personal information from individuals for artificial intelligence-(AI) based healthcare research purposes—be it a pharmaceutical company (as an example of a for-profit organization) or a university hospital (as an example of a not-for-profit organization)—as well as their boundary conditions on individuals’ likelihood to release personal information about their health. For the latter, the study considers two dimensions: the tendency to self-disclose (which is aimed to be high so that AI applications can reach their full potential) and the tendency to falsify (which is aimed to be low so that AI applications are based on both valid and reliable data).MethodsAcross three experimental studies with Amazon Mechanical Turk workers from the U.S. (n = 204, n = 330, and n = 328, respectively), Covid-19 was used as the healthcare research context.ResultsUniversity hospitals (vs. pharmaceutical companies) score higher on altruism and lower on egoism. Individuals were more willing to disclose data if they perceived that the requesting organization acts based on altruistic motives (i.e., the motives function as gate openers). Individuals were more likely to protect their data by intending to provide false information when they perceived egoistic motives to be the main driver for the organization requesting their data (i.e., the motives function as a privacy protection tool). Two moderators, namely message appeal (Study 2) and message endorser credibility (Study 3) influence the two indirect pathways of the release of personal information.ConclusionThe findings add to Communication Privacy Management Theory as well as Attribution Theory by suggesting motive-based pathways to the release of correct personal health data. Compared to not-for-profit organizations, for-profit organizations are particularly recommended to match their message appeal with the organizations’ purposes (to provide personal benefit) and to use high-credibility endorsers in order to reduce inherent disadvantages in motive perceptions.

Understanding East Asian consumers’ responses to inclusive beauty products in advertising

Increasing global demand for inclusivity has resulted in a critical need to understand how consumers respond to inclusive marketing. Centering on skin color, which is an interminable inclusivity issue, this research examines how consumers in East Asian markets (e.g., China and South Korea) evaluate and respond to inclusive (vs. non-inclusive) beauty products in advertisements across three empirical studies. The different ethnic environments of consumers in Studies 1 A and 1B and consumers’ individual differences in other-group orientation in Study 2 moderate the way inclusive products are evaluated and responded to. Additionally, a serial mediation analysis reveals that the inclusivity of products increases perceptions of brand inclusiveness and altruistic motives, thereby contributing to favorable attitudes and behavioral intentions. This research sheds light on the nuanced process of how consumers evaluate and respond to inclusive beauty products in advertisements based on individual and environmental differences.

Achieving sustainability: Determinants of conscious green purchasing behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID‐19 pandemic has spread worldwide, resulting in crises in public health and sustainable development. Aimed at understanding the determinants of conscious green purchasing behavior (GPB), this paper developed a comprehensive framework linking the moderating effect of negative environmental affective reactions (NEAR) to COVID‐19 based on the S–O–R paradigm. Using randomly selected urban residents from China's Yangtze River Delta and Bohai Rim regions, the empirical study was conducted using 559 valid responses. The results show that media and peers are the major social forces activating altruistic and egoistic motivations, while family influence was not significant. Dual motivations significantly mediated the relationships of unconditional and conditional GPB with media exposure and peer influence. Contrary to expectations, NEAR negatively moderated the formation process of conscious GPB. The findings indicate that the influence of peers on conscious GPB through dual motivations is stronger compared to media. Negative affective reactions to COVID‐19 were also found to inhibit the impact of peer influence on altruistic and egoistic motivations, as well as the path of altruistic motivation on unconditional GPB. The results of this study have important theoretical and practical implications for enterprise marketing and environmental campaigns, and narrowing the green attitude‐behavior gap.