Is methodology destiny? Religiosity and charitable giving
International Journal of Social Economics
ISSN: 0306-8293
Article publication date: 11 September 2017
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine whether people who engage in religious activities are more generous in terms of both religious and secular giving.
Design/methodology/approach
Bivariate probit (BVP) and bivariate tobit (BVT) analyses show that religious people have a greater propensity to give and higher levels of giving to both religious and secular charitable organizations. The bivariate systems permit a test of the correlation across the different giving decisions, and the correlation between religious and secular giving is found to be highly significant.
Findings
Religiosity positively influences both religious and secular donations. After controlling for this correlation, the impacts of religiosity on religious and secular giving are more efficient estimates but smaller than expected.
Originality/value
As a result of these methodological shortcomings, the causal relationship between religiosity and charitable giving is far from clear. To overcome those problems, this study uses BVP and BVT models to control for the potential correlation between religious giving and secular giving by the same individual and then draws appropriate interpretations. This study adds a firmer theoretical foundation to the existing literature.
Keywords
Citation
Li, Y. (2017), "Is methodology destiny? Religiosity and charitable giving", International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 44 No. 9, pp. 1197-1210. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSE-04-2016-0118
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2017, Emerald Publishing Limited