Dissertation Research: Unreciprocated Giving: Do Theories of Indirect Reciprocity or Generous Reputation Signaling Play a Role in Philanthropic Donations?

该奖项支持一位人类学家的论文研究，该研究考察了个人的声誉、社会声望、社会支持网络和感知到的财务稳定性如何影响是否做出慈善贡献以及捐赠金额的决定。慈善捐款是公共援助和服务机构最重要的资金来源之一；然而，我们不知道人们为什么为公共产品捐款的理论在多大程度上解释了谁向慈善机构捐款以及在什么情况下捐款的差异。这项研究收集了新墨西哥州人自愿向慈善机构捐赠时间和资源的数据，以评估最近提出的理论，这些理论认为，捐赠者通过赢得慷慨的声誉来获得社会福利和有利的关注。本研究采用私人面对面访谈的方式，收集有关个人和家庭慈善捐赠行为和生活史的回溯性、横断面、定量和定性数据。这项研究的结果将在包括人类学、社会学、经济学和心理学在内的几个学科中引起广泛的学术兴趣。更广泛的影响：通过增加我们对人类慷慨的理解，这项研究还服务于一个重要的社会目标，即抵消社会科学理论的悲观情绪，这些理论将个人描绘成纯粹的自私和自私的行为者。这项研究的新知识将对决策者和规划者有用，帮助他们制定政策，促进理想的亲社会行为。最后，本研究有助于培养一位年轻的社会科学家。

This award supports the dissertation research of an anthropologist examining how an individual's reputation, social prestige, social support network, and perceived financial stability influence decisions of whether or not to make charitable contributions and how much to donate. Charitable donations are one of the most important sources of funding for public assistance and service institutions; yet we do not know how well theories for why people contribute to public goods explain variation in who donates to charities and in what circumstances. This research collects data on New Mexicans' voluntary donations of time and resources to charities to evaluate recently proposed theories that argue a donor gains social benefits and favorable attention by earning a reputation for generosity. The research employs private face-to-face interviews to collect retrospective cross-sectional quantitative and qualitative data on the charitable donation behaviors and life histories of individuals and households. The results of this research will be of wide scholarly interest across several disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, economics, and psychology. Broader impacts: By increasing our understanding of human generosity, this research also serves an important social goal in counteracting the pessimism of social science theories that paint individuals as solely self-interested and selfish actors. The new knowledge from this study will be useful to decision makers and planners to help them develop policies to promote desirable pro-social behaviors. Finally, the research contributes to the training of a young social scientist.