Visible Minorities and Majority Giving

• Published in: Voluntas (Manchester, England) Vol. 28; no. 2; pp. 510 - 531
• Main Authors: Amankwaa, Benic, Devlin, Rose Anne
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01-04-2017; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Charities; Community; Donations; Heterogeneity; Hypotheses; Minority & ethnic groups; Minority groups; Multiculturalism & pluralism; Original Paper; Philanthropy; Political Science; Social interest; Social Policy; Social Sciences; Studies; Canada; Philanthropy; International giving; Minorities; Charitable giving
• ISSN: 0957-8765; 1573-7888
• DOI: 10.1007/s11266-016-9747-7

We examine if the presence of minority individuals in the community affects the decision to give to charities by majority individuals. We focus on two giving decisions by the majority population. The first is giving to any charitable organization; the second is giving to organizations geared to international causes. We also examine these two decisions when the sample is split into religious and non-religious individuals. We find that the larger the proportion of minorities in a given community, the less likely that members of the majority group give to charity in general—supporting the idea that heterogeneous communities deter outreach—but the more likely they are to give to international causes, giving credence to Allport’s ‘contact’ hypothesis.