Social Class Affects Public Donation:The Mediating Effect Of Empathy And Trade-off

Charitable donation is the foundation and main carrier of the third distribution,and an important approach to promote common prosperity and narrow the gap between lower and upper classes.Why are there more charitable donations from lower classes under some situations,and more charitable donations from upper classes under other situations? So far,few theories and studies have directly answered this crucial question.The cognitive theory of social class explains the reason why lower classes donate from the perspective of social class differences in empathy;The resource cost theory explains the reason why upper classes donate from the perspective of social class differences in costs.Therefore,how to integrate these two diametrically opposed theories,and how to understand the relationship and internal mechanism between social class and charitable donations within a unified theoretical framework? In addition,existing theoretical perspectives ignore the impact of situations on the relationship between social class and charitable donation.In this regard,this study intends to examine the impact of individual and situational factors on donation decision-making.Therefore,this study uses the Arousal: cost-reward model as the framework,based on the cognitive theory of social class and resource cost theory,focus on the public vs private donation situation,and adopts a questionnaire survey（Study 1）,a situational priming experiment（Study 2）,and a laboratory experiment（Study 3）to examine the mediating role of empathy and cost benefit trade-offs in the process of social class influencing charitable donations,and the moderating role of donation situation.In Study 1,a questionnaire survey was used to examine the moderating effect of public vs private situation on prosocial tendencies among 2264 subjects aged 12 to 80 years（M = 26.24,SD =13.07）under Chinese cultural background.The results showed that the interaction between subjective social class and donation situation on prosocial tendencies was significant,The prosocial tendencies of the upper class in the public situation are significantly higher than those of the lower class in the public situation;In private situations,the difference between the two is significantly reduced.In Study 2,a situational priming experiment was used to examine the mediating effect of cost benefit trade-offs（benefit-cost）in social class influence charitable donations（willingness to donate and expected amount of donation）,using 147 adults aged 18～55（M = 21.27,SD = 4.55）as subjects.The results showed that in the public situation,the cost benefit trade-offs of the upper class is greater than that of the lower class,and social class can increase the willingness to donate and the expected amount of donation through positive prediction of the cost benefit trade-offs.In the private situation,there is no significant difference in the cost benefit trade-offs between the upper and lower classes,and social class cannot increase the willingness to donate and the expected amount of donation through positive prediction of the cost benefit trade-offs.In study 3152 adults aged 18 to 30 years（M = 20.74,SD = 2.01）were used as subjects through a laboratory experiment.Using the cost benefit trade-offs paradigm,the mediating effect of empathy and cost benefit trade-offs between social class and donation decisions in public vs private situation was examined,as well as the interaction between empathy and cost benefit trade-offs on donation decisions.The results showed that in the public situation,a chain mediated mechanism for social class to increase donation rates through increased empathy and cost benefit trade-offs is established,but in the private situation,social class could not increase the donation rate by increasing empathy and cost benefit trade-offs.In addition,this study used a Generalized linear mixed effects model to examine the interaction between subjective cost-benefit trade-offs（β₁,|β₂|,DV2）and empathy for donation decisions.The interaction between the subjective weights of benefits and costs（β₁,|β₂|）,as well as the value judgments of each individual in each decision（DV2）,and empathy influence donation decisions.As empathy decreases,the positive prediction of β₁ on donation decisions becomes negative.As DV2 increases,the negative prediction of empathy on donation decisions becomes positive.In addition,in the public situation,as empathy increases,the negative predictive effect of |β₂| on donation decisions weakens;In the private situation,as empathy increases,the negative predictive effect of |β₂| on donation decisions increases;In summary,this study expands the affective and cognitive decision-making mechanisms that social class influence donations from the perspective of decision value,explores the psychological and behavioral characteristics of people from different social class,and objectively evaluates the prosociality of people from different social class based on the characteristics of donation situations,avoiding negative stereotypes or stigmatization of different social class,thereby promoting harmonious relationships between different social class,stimulating the willingness and behavior of charitable donations,and promote the third distribution.