Engaging in prosocial behavior: The role of resource meaningfulness and karmic beliefs

Prosocial behavior, by definition, is the intent to benefit others, such as through helping, donating, or volunteering. Consumers engage in a variety of such activities to benefit others, oftentimes even at the expense of their own resources. It has been estimated that individual donations account for over two-thirds of all donations every year (Charity Navigator 2022). Indeed, marketers and charitable organizations work to further enhance such contributions to enable them to serve their cause. Academic research on prosocial behavior also predominantly focuses on understanding and developing strategies to enhance charitable giving and prosocial behavior in general. Given the importance of prosocial behavior in our society, this dissertation investigates factors that shape consumers’ motivations to engage in prosocial behavior and change the nature of prosocial behavior that may even result in negative consequences. In what follows are two essays regarding each factor associated with engaging in prosocial behavior. The first essay examines the meaningfulness of a resource being donated as a factor that affects individuals’ donation allocation decisions. Although prior literature on charitable giving has focused on identifying factors that enhance the quantity of donations, relatively less research has examined factors that influence the allocation of donations, especially studying the type of donation resource as an antecedent to such allocation decisions. It has been demonstrated that consumers tend to allocate the resource associated with higher meaningfulness (sentimental value for the individual) in a more concentrated, rather than distributed, manner, choosing to allocate it among a smaller number of charities. The effect of resource meaningfulness on donation allocations is mainly driven by individuals’ desire to preserve the meaning embedded in the resource and subsequently maximize the marginal utility of resource. The second essay of my dissertation focuses on explicating the relationship between karmic beliefs and prosociality and reveals how karmic beliefs, with the salience of karmic rewards, can induce bounded ethicality that highlights conditions under which karmic beliefs lead to ethically constrained decision-making. Karma is a principle associated with positive consequences, such as guiding individuals to be prosocial as a way to do good. However, no research has systematically investigated whether karmic beliefs may, in fact, have a hidden cost. I argue and demonstrate that a higher belief in karma or the salience of the concept of karma induces self-serving altruism when karmic rewards are present, leading to ethically constrained decision-making under the guise of prosociality. However, when karmic rewards are not at stake—that is, the potential for self-benefit is absent—the proposed effect is attenuated. The findings are relevant to the current marketplace practices, such as the use of crowdsourcing platforms and peer-review educational systems, which heavily rely on social interactions among people from different karmic belief systems. In summary, this essay demonstrates how good deeds toward others may have ethically constrained consequences, and how extraordinary beliefs, such as karmic beliefs, may underlie these paradoxical implications.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Business Administration

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2022

Author dc:creator

• Oh, Hyewon

Contributors dc:contributor

• Mehta, Ravi
• Goodman, Joseph
• Otnes, Cele
• Torelli, Carlos

• donation
• resource
• meaning
• allocation
• decision-making
• karmic beliefs
• bounded ethicality
• self-serving altruism

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2022 Hyewon Oh

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/115861

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F115861