Why People Donate To Charity: A Social Psychological Perspective

Abstract

There are many psychological processes that determine whether people make a charitable donation, some of which are obvious to the donor and some of which are more subtle. In this review, we draw on social psychological research into helping behaviour to examine why people donate money to charity. Helping is a complex behaviour that is the endpoint of a series of psychological steps or processes. This report is divided into sections that broadly follow these steps.