Prosocial Motivation Research Articles

How to attract low prosocial funders in crowdfunding? Matching among funders, project descriptions, and platform types

The amount of crowdfunding research that investigates funding success factors has been increasing. The existing research shows inconsistent evidence regarding how a prosocial project description affects funding success and largely ignores the issue of alignment/misalignment among different factors in affecting funding success. We suggest that funders’ prosocial motivation can be an important factor for this inconsistent evidence. We integrate the elaboration likelihood model and language expectancy theory and demonstrate distinct decision-making patterns from high and low prosocial motivation funders. Through three experiments, we provide evidence for alignment/misalignment effects among funders’ prosocial motivation, prosocial project descriptions, and platform types (donation-based vs. reward-based). While there are no differences for participants with high prosocial motivation across conditions, we find that participants with low prosocial motivation are more willing to contribute to a project that has alignment between the different factors, namely to a project that has a high prosocial description on a donation-based platform, or to a project that has a low prosocial description on a reward-based platform. This research sheds light on the crowdfunding and prosocial motivation literature.

A New Pathway to Job Crafting: The Role of Gratitude, Responsiveness, and Prosocial Motivation

A New Pathway to Job Crafting: The Role of Gratitude, Responsiveness, and Prosocial Motivation

What Impedes Pro-social Motivation Among Hospitality Frontline Workers?

What Impedes Pro-social Motivation Among Hospitality Frontline Workers?

Grandiose narcissism and organizational citizenship behaviors: the mediational role of prosocial motivation

Grandiose narcissism and organizational citizenship behaviors: the mediational role of prosocial motivation

Reevaluating Auguste Comte’s Philosophy of Altuism among Teachers

This study explores the extent of altruism practiced by teachers and their willingness to sacrifice for the welfare of others. Using a quantitative research approach with a descriptive-survey design, the study examines the profile of respondents, including their sex, age, civil status, years of teaching, and grade level taught. Additionally, the research investigates the respondents' level of altruism and the motivating factors behind their altruistic behavior. The study also explores whether there is a significant association between the extent of altruism and the profile variables, as well as the reasons motivating altruistic behavior. The participants in this research comprised 31 (45%) male respondents, 36 (52%) female respondents, and 2 (3%) respondents who did not specify their age. Most respondents fell within the age bracket of 20-24 years (41%), with the least number of respondents aged between 55-59 years (3%). The majority of teachers had 0-3 years of teaching experience (46.38%), while only a few had 24-27 years of experience (1.45%). In terms of civil status, the majority were single (71.01%), while a smaller percentage were married (17.39%). Regarding teaching grade level, most respondents taught at the Junior High level (42.03%), followed by the Primary level (29%) and Senior High level (19%). The study found that teachers generally practiced altruism frequently and to a significant extent (M= 2.45, SD= 0.90). Specifically, the teachers were highly motivated to sincerely help students (M= 2.06, SD= 0.83). Analyzing the association between the extent of altruistic behavior and profile variables revealed a significant connection between the respondents' sex and their propensity to live for others (p-value= 0.036). Furthermore, a significant association was observed between the extent of altruistic behavior and the teaching grade level when grouped (p-value = 0.022). Based on the findings, it can be concluded that female teachers tend to exhibit more altruistic behavior than their male counterparts, and Primary teachers with a student-centered approach are significantly more altruistic compared to teachers at other grade levels. The study suggests several recommendations: 1) Male teachers should enhance their socio-affective skills, including compassion, generosity, and prosocial motivation. 2) Junior and Senior high school teachers should focus on practicing altruism more effectively, investing more time and patience with their students. 3) Respondents should be exposed to programs or activities that encourage the practice of authentic altruism to a significant extent

The effectiveness of the Dutch Meaningful Roles program in children: a study protocol for a cluster randomized controlled study

BackgroundA positive, prosocial classroom climate is associated with improved social competence and academic achievement, as well as with decreased internalizing problems and antisocial behavior in children. It is expected that motivation to behave prosocially is needed to achieve a prosocial climate in the classroom, and that such motivation can be enhanced through three components of self-determination theory (SDT): competence, relatedness, and autonomy. The goal of this protocol is to describe the design of a study aiming to evaluate the effectiveness of a classroom-based program based on SDT components promoting a prosocial classroom climate.MethodsA cluster randomized controlled trial (RCT) will be conducted to examine the effectiveness of the classroom-based program Meaningful Roles, aiming to improve prosocial classroom climate through increasing children’s intrinsic prosocial motivation, stimulated by increasing social autonomy, social competence, and social relatedness. A multi-informant (i.e., children, teachers, and school leaders) and multi-method (i.e., questionnaires and focus groups) approach will be used to assess primary outcomes (i.e., prosocial behavior, intrinsic (prosocial) motivation, social autonomy, social competence, and social relatedness) and secondary outcomes (i.e., school wellbeing, social position, bullying, victimization, and civic skills), as well as moderators (i.e., working elements, child, teacher, school, and program characteristics, and program integrity).DiscussionThe current study will provide information on the effectiveness of a classroom-based program promoting a prosocial classroom climate. It is of crucial importance that the school environment can provide a positive, prosocial classroom climate in which children feel safe and can achieve optimal social and academic competence and wellbeing.Trial registrationClinicalTrials (NCT05891067).

Examining the ethics of school-based mindfulness programs

ABSTRACT School-based mindfulness programs (SBMPs) are gaining prevalence in K-12 schools, yet little is known about how they foster students’ ethical development. Using a qualitative content analysis this study examined how three SBMP curricula promoted ethical literacy. The primary ethical frame was Care/Compassion with little evidence of Justice/Fairness and Rights. The main Prosocial Motivation was Perspective-Taking. The primary curricular tool used was Reflection, with Skills and Knowledge used to a lesser extent. Social-emotional learning domains differed across the curricula, but Responsible Decision-Making was least prevalent across all. Explicit terms related to morals/ethics were scarce. The emphasis on relational-related ethical frames and motivations represents a shift toward a more nuanced view of moral development that represents a dynamic interplay between self and other marked by compassion and empathy.

The benefits of prosocial power motivation in leadership: Action orientation fosters a win-win.

Power motivation is considered a key component of successful leadership. Based on its dualistic nature, the need for power (nPower) can be expressed in a dominant or a prosocial manner. Whereas dominant motivation is associated with antisocial behaviors, prosocial motivation is characterized by more benevolent actions (e.g., helping, guiding). Prosocial enactment of the power motive has been linked to a wide range of beneficial outcomes, yet less has been investigated what determines a prosocial enactment of the power motive. According to Personality Systems Interactions (PSI) theory, action orientation (i.e., the ability to self-regulate affect) promotes prosocial enactment of the implicit power motive and initial findings within student samples verify this assumption. In the present study, we verified the role of action orientation as an antecedent for prosocial power enactment in a leadership sample (N = 383). Additionally, we found that leaders personally benefited from a prosocial enactment strategy. Results show that action orientation through prosocial power motivation leads to reduced power-related anxiety and, in turn, to greater leader well-being. The integration of motivation and self-regulation research reveals why leaders enact their power motive in a certain way and helps to understand how to establish a win-win situation for both followers and leaders.

Predisposed, Exposed, or Both? How Prosocial Motivation and CSR Education Are Related to Prospective Employees’ Desire for Social Impact in Work

Researchers have explored important questions about employees’ prosocial motivation to impact others through their work and about employees’ engagement in corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. Studies show that job seekers are attracted to CSR-engaged employers, but little is known about whether and why prospective employees are attracted by job roles that allow them to have positive social impact. We used prosocial motivation theory to develop hypotheses about processes through which a greater desire for social impact in work is associated with being predisposed to it (due to trait-like prosocial motivation), being exposed to the possibility of it (through CSR-related educational choices), and both in partially mediated sequence. Analyses of data from 187 prospective employees provided support for most hypotheses. Our findings inform new directions for research on CSR and recruitment, the CSR education literature, and recruitment practices that leverage prospective employees’ desire for social impact through performing their regular work.

Non-monetary narratives motivate businesses to engage with climate change.

The dominant narrative to motivate business actors to take climate actions emphasizes opportunities to increase monetary gains, linking sustainability to the financial goals of these organizations. The prevalence of monetary motivations in sustainability communication among businesses, consultancies, academics and international organizations has made this narrative a truism in the private sector. We conducted an online, real-world, large-n experiment to evaluate the comparative effectiveness of different motivations using narrative communication. We show that non-monetary narratives highlighting prosocial or achievement motivations are 55% more effective in creating responses from businesses than narratives emphasizing monetary gains. These findings are robust across most narrative and audience characteristics, including age and language. Our findings suggest that communication towards business leaders around sustainability can be multi-pronged and should incorporate prosocial and achievement motivations aside from articulating potential financial benefits.

Relationships between Leadership Styles and Prosocial Motivation Depend on Cultural Values: A Case Study in Sri Lanka

Organizations are increasingly concerned about their social and environmental responsibilities and are interested in developing strategies to improve their performance and accountability in these areas. One such strategy focuses on leadership styles, by which leaders are selected or trained to address the needs of people and entities outside themselves (i.e., stakeholders), and subsequently inspire their followers to do the same. Implicit in this strategy is an assumption that a new type of leadership is required to achieve social and environmental responsibility goals. In this study, we offer a different perspective by proposing that leaders may only need to be encouraged or trained to emphasize some aspects of their existing leadership styles, while minimizing the use of others. We focus our study in Asia, where a paternal leadership style is prevalent, and often expected by followers. This leadership style consists of behaviors that may be organized into three dimensions: authoritarian, benevolent, and moral. We propose that the benevolent and moral dimensions reflect leadership styles that promote followers’ social motivation and examine their interaction with the self-transcendent values of their followers in predicting followers’ prosocial motivation to help others through their work. We found that only the benevolent dimension was significant and appeared to compensate for low self-transcendent values in followers. Implications for using leadership to promote social responsibility are discussed.

Integrity, CEO Compensation, and Performance: Evidence from Public Enterprises in South Korea

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze perceived integrity of public service users and public enterprise employees in association with public enterprise performance, and the role of the CEO compensation on the association between perceived integrity and public enterprise performance.
 Design/methodology/approach: This study uses publicly available performance evaluations and CEO compensation disclosures by the Ministry of Strategy and Finance (MOSF) in South Korea and integrity assessments by the Anti-Corruption & Civil Rights Commission of Korea from 2014 to 2017.
 Findings: We find a positive association between integrity and public enterprise performance, a result driven by the positive association between integrity perceived by service users and public enterprise performance. Furthermore, higher monetary compensation paid to CEOs has a negative influence on the relationship between integrity perceived by public service users and public enterprise performance, whereas higher compensation paid to CEOs has a positive influence on the relationship between integrity perceived by employees and public enterprise performance.
 Research limitation/implications: Integrity perception might be subject to bias depending on the type of stakeholders (public service users or public enterprise employees). Thus, information users of public enterprise performance reports need to be aware of perception gaps in relation to multi-faceted aspects of public enterprise performance. We provide insights into the relationship between perception of integrity and public enterprise performance of the government bodies who enact and administer laws and public policies.
 Originality/value: This paper captures how the perceptions of integrity, as assessed by diverse stakeholders with differing perspectives and levels of honesty and transparency, influence public enterprise performance assessments. Furthermore, it extends the findings of prior studies on the impact of monetary compensation in the public sector (see Abner et al. 2017; Boyd et al. 2018; Chen and Hsieh 2015, among others) to confirm how CEO monetary compensation impacts the relationship between integrity and public enterprise performance. In the public sector, the extrinsic motivation of higher CEO monetary compensation relative to other public enterprises generally crowds out prosocial motivation, which, in turn, impairs the relationship between external integrity and public enterprise performance. At the same time, higher CEO monetary compensation has an incremental impact on internal integrity in association with financial management performance. Thus, we suggest that public enterprises should pay close attention to the design of their current incentive systems for CEOs, place greater weight on prosocial motivation to manage external integrity, and emphasize skill-based monetary compensation to manage internal integrity. Lastly, using manually collected data sets of public enterprises provided by two independent government organizations in Korea, we increase the objectivity and generalizability of the findings of the few studies published on public service organizations in a single-country setting.

Word of mouse! What drives consumer voluntarism to write online reviews?

ABSTRACT Online reviews have gained attention of both prospective consumers and business entities. Prior researchers have investigated motivators of online review writing; however, explicit role of intrinsic motivations for this voluntary act has yet to gain much attention. This study addresses this gap by examining consumers’ intrinsic motivations influencing their intention to write online reviews. An integrated model incorporating hedonic, pro-social, and ego-defensive motives as predictors along with Theory of Planned Behavior was developed and tested with data collected from 1111 users of e-tailer platforms. Results of PLS-SEM procedure reveal that the consumer’s intention to write online reviews is predicated on hedonic motivation and ego-defensive function as well as two TPB factors, namely, attitude toward review writing and perceived behavioral control. The study’s findings elucidate the complex mechanisms underlying consumers’ intention to write online reviews with implications for theory and practice of e-WOM behavior and business research.

Corrigendum to Firms’ Sustainability Marketing Commitment: The Roles of Chief Marketing Officers’ Future Focus and Prosocial Motivation

Corrigendum to Firms’ Sustainability Marketing Commitment: The Roles of Chief Marketing Officers’ Future Focus and Prosocial Motivation

The prosocial-motivated process of meaningful innovation: evidence from Chinese start-ups in digital industry

ABSTRACT With the increasing prominence of SDGs, the prosocial issues of firms’ innovation activities are gaining more attention. Nevertheless, the micro-foundation of the prosocial innovation process remains unexplored. To fill this gap, we introduce the meaningful innovation (MI) framework in order to develop a moderated mediation model for investigating the prosocial motivated innovation process. By conducting an empirical analysis based on a three-wave survey of 24 small high-tech new ventures in China’s digital industry, we find that (1) as an essential source of external meaning, an employee’s prosocial motivation is positively related to a firm’s innovation performance; (2) employees’ creativity mediates the positive relationship between prosocial motivation and firms’ innovation performance; and (3) although intrinsic motivation does not significantly moderate the above mediation effect, it is positively related to firms’ innovation performance; employees’ creativity also mediates this relationship. This paper contributes to the literature on ‘social value and innovation’ studies by revealing a prosocial-motivated innovation process and ascertaining the micro-foundation of the meaningful innovation framework.

Moving From Passion to Purpose: A STEM-Focused After-school Program’s Influence on Purpose Outcomes

Despite efforts to increase diversity in STEM fields, marginalized populations—particularly women and Black and Latinx workers—remain underrepresented in STEM professions. The present qualitative study sought to explore the relationship between sense of purpose and STEM engagement within an after-school, experiential (i.e., involving hands-on learning) STEM enrichment program, called Change Makers. Specifically, semi-structured interviews with racially diverse and predominantly low SES high school students ( N = 13, 30.8% self-identified female) and their program instructors ( N = 3, 66% self-identified female) were qualitatively analyzed using a grounded theory-informed approach. Results indicate that engagement in Change Makers contributed to youth transforming their preexisting STEM interest into three purpose-related constructs: (1) self-efficacy experiences (general and specific to science), (2) increased willingness to engage in career exploration, and (3) deepened prosocial motivation. These findings underscore the value of connecting youth with experiential purpose curriculum to improve the STEM career pipeline. Finally, these findings represent insightful perspectives regarding the mutable nature of purpose development. Limitations are discussed and recommendations are made for future research and programing.

The motivations and practices of vegetarian and vegan Saudis

In the Middle East, particularly in Saudi Arabia, the offering of a meat dish to guests is a deeply embedded cultural tradition, and a meat-based diet is the standard in Saudi Arabia. Thus, the rise of veganism and vegetarianism within Saudi Arabia is surprising and worthy of attention, as is understanding the perceptions and motivations behind this phenomenon, particularly as they relate to food and sustainability. This research was designed to investigate this emerging phenomenon and to identify key differences in dietarian identity between Saudi vegetarians and vegans using Rosenfeld and Burrow's Dietarian Identity Questionnaire. Among other results, the vegan group scored significantly higher on the prosocial motivation construct, suggesting the desire to help society as a whole is a stronger motivating factor for vegans. As well, the vegan cohort scored higher in the personal motivation category. From an environmental and public health perspective, understanding the key factors motivating individuals to adopt a vegetarian or vegan diet in a meat-based culture like Saudi Arabia can be used to encourage others to pursue more healthy and sustainable food behaviors.

How Latiné engineering students resist White male engineering culture: A multi‐institution analysis of academic engagement

AbstractBackgroundAlthough participation rates vary by field, Latiné and women engineers continue to be underrepresented across most segments of the engineering workforce. Research has examined engagement and persistence of Latiné and White women in engineering; however, few studies have investigated how race, ethnicity, gender, and institutional setting interact to produce inequities in the field.PurposeTo address these limitations, we examined how Latina, Latino, and White women and men students' engagement in engineering was informed by their intersecting identities and within their institutional setting over the course of a year.MethodWe interviewed 32 Latina, Latino, and White women and men undergraduate engineering students attending 11 different predominantly White and Hispanic Serving Institutions. Thematic analysis was used to interpret themes from the data.ResultsOur findings illustrate how Latinas, Latinos, and White women developed a strong engineering identity, which was critical to their engagement in engineering. Students' engineering identity was grounded in their perceived fit within engineering culture, sense of purpose for pursuing their degree, and resistance to the dominance of White male culture in engineering. Latinas described unique forms of gendered, racialized marginalization in engineering, whereas Latinas and Latinos highlighted prosocial motivations for completing their degree.ConclusionsFindings suggest that institutional cultures, norms, and missions are critical to broadening participation of Latinas, Latinos, and White women in engineering. Disrupting White male culture, leveraging Latiné students' cultural wealth, and counter‐framing traditional recruitment pitches for engineering appear to be key in these efforts.

When Does Prosocial Motivation Deliver? A Dual-Motivations Approach to Social Enterprise Outcomes

When Does Prosocial Motivation Deliver? A Dual-Motivations Approach to Social Enterprise Outcomes

The right person for the right job: workers’ prosociality as a screening device

The impact of workers’ non-pecuniary motivation on their productivity is a fundamental issue in labor economics. Previous studies indicate that prosocially motivated workers may perform better when assigned to jobs having socially desirable implications – even if effort is non-contractible and they are offered a low-powered fixed-compensation scheme – as compared to a standard job with an effort-contingent payment. This suggests that profit-maximizing employers should assign workers to different jobs, based on workers’ prosociality. We run an experiment to explore the link between workers’ prosociality and their level of effort under a prosocial and a standard job. Our experimental results provide some support to the hypothesis that selfish employers exploit the information on workers’ prosociality to assign them the type of job that would be most profitable from the firm’s perspective. However, the prosocial motivation of employers emerges as a second important determinant of their contract choice: employers’ prosociality drives their contract choice, when the worker is not prosocial.