Populism and Charity Donations: An Australian Case Study

Abstract

The reasons why people donate to charities have been extensively researched, but how this behavior relates to political values is less well understood. We also know little about how the rise of populist values among the electorate will influence charitable giving in the future. Using a national election survey conducted in Australia in mid-2019, this article examines the influence of populist values on charity donations. The results show that populist values are strong predictors of charitable giving and that those who hold these values are significantly less likely to donate. Among those who do choose to donate, the choice of charity is also strongly influenced by populist values. These results demonstrate that the increasing importance of populist values among the public will have significant implications for the future level and direction of charity donations.

Keywords

donations charities political values populism

What shapes philanthropy? There is a rich and growing body of multidisciplinary research, which examines why people donate to charities.¹ Research in social psychology, economics, and marketing has been particularly valuable in identifying the causal mechanisms that drive charitable giving. In their review of more than 500 studies in the field, Bekkers and Wiepking (2011; see also Wiepking et al., 2012) categorize these drivers into eight areas, ranging from awareness of the needs of others to feelings of altruism.² As a consequence of this research, we now know much about what factors lie behind charitable giving, and how these relate to the underlying value systems of individuals.

What has hitherto been absent from this research is a comprehensive analysis of the role of political values and how values shape charitable giving. Research shows that the moral and political values that underpin political attitudes and behavior do play an important role in predicting the likelihood of charitable giving (Fowler & Kam, 2007; Thomsson & Vostroknutov, 2017; Winterich et al., 2012). These values can cover the full spectrum of views about society, ranging from humanitarianism and egalitarianism to altruism and spirituality. However, so far missing from this research is an analysis of how populist political values affect philanthropy.

The rise of populist political values over the last three decades is arguably the most significant change that has taken place in postwar mass politics (Moffitt, 2016; Norris & Inglehart, 2019). Populists view the elite, broadly defined, as corrupt, self-serving, and acting against the interests of the citizenry. This antielitist appeal has had major consequences for democratic politics around the world with significant successes for populist parties and candidates. Examples of this include the 2016 election of Donald Trump as the U.S. president, the 2016 Brexit vote in the United Kingdom, and the rise of populist parties in many European countries, notably in Hungary, Greece, and Spain. In addition to fundamentally changing the politics of their respective countries, populism has the potential to affect many other aspects of society as well. Our focus here is on one of these aspects: populism’s impact on charitable giving.

This article fills this gap in the research by examining the political values of those who choose to donate—or not to donate—to charity. We use a representative national survey conducted immediately after the May 2019 Australian general election to examine the role of political values in determining charitable giving. As an incentive for respondents to complete the questionnaire, the survey included the option of either taking a small cash payment of $A10 or donating the same amount to one of five charities. This provides a unique natural experiment to evaluate the influence of political values on the survey respondent’s decision whether or not to make a charitable donation.

The results show that political values are indeed important predictors of charitable giving, but more in the form of views about populism rather than where the person places themselves on the ideological spectrum. Net of a wide variety of other factors, those who see social homogeneity as important and who stress the importance of citizens in decision-making, are significantly less likely to donate compared with others. Moreover, this finding persists despite the inclusion of a wide variety of other factors, including inherited characteristics, such as age and gender, and attained characteristics such as education and income. We also find that populism influences which charities people choose to donate to. The findings have implications for the levels and direction of charitable giving, as populist values become an increasingly important part of the electorate’s worldview.

This article proceeds as follows. The “Values, Politics, and Giving” section examines the current research relating to the effect of political values and ideology on donations. The “Charitable Giving in Australia” section outlines the context of charitable giving in Australia whereas the “Populism’s Influence on Charitable Giving” section identifies three hypotheses that we test using the data. The “Data, Measurement, Method” section outlines the survey and the operationalization of the main variables. The “Results” section presents the main results, whereas the “Conclusion” section evaluates the implications of the findings for the future of charitable giving in an age of populism.

Values, Politics, and Giving

The early studies that sought to understand why people make charitable donations focused on the socioeconomic characteristics of individuals (see, for example, Belfield & Beney, 2000; Mesch et al., 2006). This research has been concerned with identifying those individuals who are most likely to make a monetary donation and the circumstances—such as the amount involved, its elasticity, and not least its tax implications (Boatright et al., 2006)—that may encourage or discourage a donation. This research has been driven in large part by the voluntary and nonprofit organizations, which stand to benefit from these donations. Understanding the demographic profile of those most likely to donate has obvious implications for devising marketing strategies to encourage charitable giving.

Recent studies have moved beyond examining the social background to evaluate the importance of a person’s value system as an explanation for donating. The values that have emerged as important in these studies include humanitarianism, egalitarianism, and social justice as well as religious devotion and concern with maintaining social order (for reviews, see Bekkers & Wiepking, 2011, p. 941–942; Wiepking et al., 2012). These diverse values share two common characteristics. First, they all identify a set of values that relate to positive and mutually beneficial relations between individuals. Second, these values project a world that has a different focus and outlook to the one that currently exists. The incentive to donate is therefore found in the desire to shape society in a positive direction and in line with the person’s own value system (Bennett, 2003).

The link between values and donating is particularly relevant in the case of politics. Numerous studies of charitable giving have confirmed the importance of values and politics. The most obvious example is joining a political party or volunteering to work for a political cause, where there is a clear match between the person’s worldview and the goals of the organization in question (Francia et al., 2005; Tam Cho, 2002). For example, using a Dutch case study, Bekkers (2005) shows that political values and preferences are the most important drivers of civic engagement. The rise of postmaterial values in the 1970s is also related to donating, especially in the context of environmental and humanitarian goals that form the main policy priorities of those holding a postmaterialist outlook (Bekkers & Wiepking, 2006).

Several studies argue that the moral foundations of politics provide the most relevant framework for donating, particularly as they relate to where people place themselves on the ideological spectrum. In an experimental study, Thomsson and Vostroknutov (2017) find that while placement on the left-right spectrum does not influence how much a person donates, the reasons that are advanced for donating differ significantly. Those on the right are more likely to justify a donation based on social norms, such as a desire for social order and to maintain their reputation with their peer group. This also involves giving to a cause whose values they share. By contrast, those on the left have little interest in order or reputation but instead are motivated by “general ideas about redistribution in society” (Thomsson & Vostroknutov, 2017, p. 184). Fowler and Kam (2007) come to similar findings in another experimental study, as do Winterich et al. (2012). The latter show that “a charity’s positioning and political identity interact to influence donation intentions and behavior . . . a charity’s alignment with the donor’s political identity may garner increased donations” (p. 346).

While there is therefore broad agreement about how political values motivate donating, studies examining the importance of political partisanship have come to differing conclusions. In a Dutch study focusing on volunteering, Bekkers (2005) finds that identification with a center-left party is a significant predictor, while those who align themselves with a center-right party are less likely to volunteer. This, it is argued, is more a consequence of the factors that shape political preferences, such as social capital and the socioeconomic resources that an individual can bring to bear (Brown & Ferris, 2007). By contrast, Brooks (2005; see also Brooks, 2007; Paarlberg et al., 2019) finds no effect for party affiliation in an analysis of who makes charitable donations, once a range of factors such as social capital are taken into account.

Our interest in this paper is how populist political values shape charitable giving. The concept of populism is elusive and constantly changing. It has its origins in 19th century U.S. politics but was widely used to describe various Latin American leaders and movements in the 1950s and 1960s. Most recently, it has been associated with such leaders as Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, and Viktor Orban as well as a large number of political parties, mostly in Europe (Zulianello, 2020). The concept has also been conflated with such terms as antipolitics, antipartyism, antiestablishment, and outsider politics. However, a common theme among all of these terms is that it conveys a profound dissatisfaction with traditional politics and in the way in which the political system treats ordinary citizens (Barr, 2009). Our definition of populism (and its operationalization, described in the next section) follows that of Mudde (2004) and others (see, for example, Canovan, 1999; Pappas, 2016; Taggart, 2000) who have identified three elements.

The first element is the one most often mentioned as synonymous with populism: Antielitism and the belief that the elite is corrupt, deceitful and interested only in serving its own interests and not those of the mass public it professes to represent. The second element is the idea that true sovereignty in a democratic society rests with the people, and only the people can be trusted to act in the best interests of all of the population. Third, the people are viewed as a homogeneous and united entity; this necessarily excludes any groups which are not culturally, ethnically, or racially part of the majority, such as immigrants (Schulz et al., 2018). Each of these three elements overlaps in various ways to create a worldview in which citizens have been “shut out of power by corrupt politicians and an unrepresentative elite” (Canovan, 2002, p. 27).

The opinions that form populist thinking drive voters in the direction of parties and leaders that advance radical solutions to what they see as a crisis of democracy and a “democratic deficit” (Lavezzolo & Ramiro, 2018; Norris, 2011). In turn, these new populist parties leverage on voters’ discontent to challenge the established political order and return the needs of the mass public to the top of the political agenda (Bergh, 2004; Pauwels, 2014). Populist parties and leaders can come from both the political left and the political right; while the majority is from the right (Zulianello, 2020), highly successful leftwing populist parties include Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece. While left and right differ on the policies they advance to deal with the problem, they agree that the will of the people has been usurped by self-interested and unrepresentative elite.

This overview of the research that has examined the relationship between political values and charitable giving suggests three main limitations in the current studies. The first is that much of the research relies on experiments and makes inferences from these findings of individual behavior. The methodological problem is modeling the causality between the various factors and, not least, the fact that by definition values are a phenomenon that is not open to experimental study.³ A second limitation in the research is that a significant body of work relates to volunteering, in which a political context is arguably very different from donating because it involves a person’s time and implies a strong psychological bond with the receiver (Bekkers, 2005). Third, most studies do not control for a sufficiently wide range of factors. Since values underpin views of the political system, these must be taken into account in any analysis to accurately estimate the role of populism.

We seek to overcome the limitations in prior research by estimating the importance of political values in shaping charitable giving using a large, representative national survey conducted in 2019. We define charitable giving as “the donation of money to an organization that benefits others beyond one’s family” (Bekkers & Wiepking, 2011, p. 925) and political values as “deeply rooted motivations or orientations guiding or explaining certain attitudes, norms, and opinions which, in turn, direct human action or at least part of it” (Halman, 2007, p. 309). Our dependent variable is therefore the likelihood of charitable giving and we seek to explain it by examining variations in political values. The next section outlines the context for charitable giving in Australia.

Charitable Giving in Australia

The culture surrounding charitable giving in Australia has been influenced by the country’s colonial origins, with the evolution of a political culture based on the outlooks of the early settlers (Scaife et al., 2015). In Canada and the United States, the early settlers were imbued with the values of the 18th century Enlightenment and the liberal views of political theorists such as John Locke, David Hume, and Adam Smith. In this view, charitable giving was an individual’s personal responsibility. By contrast, the 19th century settlers in Australia were influenced by the then prevailing utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill (Collins, 1985). The consequence of this has been a collectivist political culture in which, in the famous words of W.K. Hancock (1930, p. 72), citizens “look upon the state as a vast public utility, whose duty it is to provide the greatest happiness for the greatest number.” In this view, charitable giving is less an individual responsibility than something that the state should provide.

The history of charitable giving in Australia has been shaped by this collectivist view of the role of the state vis-à-vis that of individual responsibility. McDonald and Scaife (2011), for example, show that the dominant value around philanthropy in Australia is egalitarianism, which contrasts with the prevailing ethos in the United States, which is individualism. This is reflected not just in the level of giving, but in the public acknowledgment that such acts attract in the media. For example, McDonald and Scaife’s media study of how newspapers treat charitable donations found that “Australian papers routinely undervalued giving behavior, which was much less likely to be acknowledged, let alone celebrated, suggesting that some philanthropic behavior is potentially going unnoticed” (McDonald & Scaife, 2011, p. 320).

While the absolute level of donations in Australia is lower than in many other comparable societies, the long-term trend is for an increase in charitable giving. This has been facilitated by tax changes and an improved regulatory environment, which has made donating easier and more financially favorable (Scaife et al., 2015, p. 491). In 2016, for example, around 40% of taxpayers made a charitable donation to at least one of the over 50,000 organizations eligible to receive a tax-deductible donation; the average donation was $A760.⁴ There has also been an increase in large philanthropic donations, especially to nonprofit organizations such as universities, in line with a greater emphasis on fund raising within these bodies and awareness within the general population of their benefits to the society as a whole.

The motivations for charitable giving in Australia would appear to differ from those of other countries, especially those with an individualist culture. Nevertheless, Australia frequently appears at or near the top of indices of charitable giving. The 2018 Charitable Aid Foundation survey, for example, placed Australia second in the world for donating and New Zealand third, just ahead of the United States (Charitable Aid Foundation, 2018). Among the advanced democracies, Australia ranks first, with 71% saying that they had donated money to a charity in the previous year. Given the high level of charitable giving, Australia, therefore, represents an ideal case study to examine the impact of populism on philanthropy.

Populism’s Influence on Charitable Giving

From this overview of the research, we can identify five hypotheses that can be tested empirically using the survey data; how these concepts are operationalized is outlined in the next section. While values cannot be measured directly, they can be identified indirectly through the three elements of populism identified earlier. The first relates to how political elites represent a citizen’s interests. We would expect that someone who held negative views about political elites would be less likely to make donations, since she would view the charity sector as part of the established political structure and inimical to the best interests of the citizenry and often subversive of it. This leads to the first hypothesis:

Hypothesis 1: Individuals with antielitist values will be less likely to make donations compared with other individuals.

The second theme in populism is the view that political legitimacy rests with “the people” (Norris & Inglehart, 2019, p. 4), and only they should be permitted to make major decisions. Once again, a belief in “the people” as the sole repository of popular sovereignty should reduce the probability of donating to charity since the charitable organizations would be associated with the political elite and the government. This leads to the second hypothesis:

Hypothesis 2: Individuals who see “the people” as the source of political legitimacy will be less likely to make donations compared with other individuals.

The third element, the belief in society as unified and cohesive, should also lead to a reduced probability of donating to charity for the same reasons. However, to the extent that people with these views do decide to donate, we might also predict that their beliefs would influence the type of charities they favor. Charities emphasizing social cohesion and traditional values should be preferred over others that do not see them as important. This leads to two further hypotheses:

Hypothesis 3: Individuals who emphasize social homogeneity will be less likely to make donations compared with other individuals.

Hypothesis 4: Individuals who emphasize social homogeneity will prefer charities that reflect their own view of a unified society compared with other individuals.

Since populist parties can be from both left and right, it is important to take a person’s self-identification on the left-right ideological continuum into account. This single dimension is readily recognized by mass publics around the world and is the organizational concept that underlies most party systems (Mair, 2007). While the research outlined earlier is by no means clear, we might expect those holding leftwing (and collectivist) political values to donate more to charity compared with those holding rightwing (and individualist) political values, since the former may place less emphasis on who receives the donations compared with the latter (Thomsson & Vostroknutov, 2017). The hypothesis that follows from this is:

Hypothesis 5: Individuals with leftwing political values will be more likely to make donations compared with individuals with rightwing political values.

The remainder of the paper tests these five hypotheses using a large, national survey conducted in Australia in 2019.

Data, Measurement, Method

Data

The data come from the Australian cross-section of the international Comparative Study of Electoral Systems project.⁵ The survey was conducted between June 3 and 17 2019 using an online probability sample and was designed to measure political attitudes and behavior following the May 2019 general election. A total of 2,676 active panel members were invited to participate in the survey with 2,000 respondents completing the questionnaire, representing an effective response rate of 77.4%.⁶ The sample is weighted to represent the Australian population aged 18 and above.⁷ Since we are interested in political values, the analyses are limited to respondents who are Australian citizens and therefore eligible to vote; this reduces the number of cases to 1,814.

Measurement

The dependent variable is whether or not the respondent chose to receive a personal payment of $A10 for completing the questionnaire or made a donation of the same monetary value to one of five charities. The charities were chosen by the employees of the survey company to reflect a range of possible donations and the choices vary for each survey wave to ensure an equitable distribution across the charity sector.

The five charities are listed in Table 1. Around one in five registered charities in Australia is classified as “large,”⁸ having an income of $A1M or more, so all of the five charities identified here fall into that category. Two of the charities, Bush Heritage Australia and Guide Dogs Victoria, have much more substantial incomes, of $A28.2M and $A19.3M, respectively. All but Guide Dogs Victoria, which is state-based, are national charities. Two of the charities (Bowel Cancer Australia and the Brain Foundation) are directed at improving health outcomes, while Guide Dogs Victoria is aimed at people with disabilities. Of the remaining two charities, Bush Heritage Australia is concerned with the environmental protection and the Elizabeth Morgan House Aboriginal Women’s Services assists Indigenous women who are homeless or the victims of domestic violence.

Table 1.

Overview of the Five Charities.

Charity	Funding purpose	Coverage	Year established	Income ($A millions)
Bowel Cancer Australia	Prevention, early diagnosis, treatment for bowel cancer	National	2000	3.1
Brain Foundation	Research in Australia into neurological disorders, brain disease, brain injuries	National	1969	1.9
Bush Heritage Australia	Purchase, management of land to conserve landscapes and native species	National	1991	28.2
Elizabeth Morgan House Aboriginal Women’s Services	Assist Indigenous females at risk of homelessness and victims of crime (including family violence)	National	1978	2.6
Guide Dogs Victoria	Provide, train guide dogs for people with disabilities	Victoria	1962	19.3

Source. Australian Charities and Not-for-Profits Commission 2019 annual report, https://www.acnc.gov.au.

Table 2 shows that 79% of the respondents chose a personal payment, either in the form of direct payment via PayPal (30%) or a department store or supermarket card (49%). Around one in five of the respondents chose to make a charitable donation, ranging from Bowel Cancer Australia (6%) to Guide Dogs Victoria (2%). Less than 1% of the respondents declined to receive an incentive for their participation in the survey. The proportion agreeing to make a donation is less than the estimate for charitable donations across the Australian population noted earlier (71%). The difference may be explained by the fact that the incentive was offered in return for a service—completion of a survey questionnaire—and is not therefore an independent charity donation.

Table 2.

Survey Respondents’ Choice of Incentive.

Incentive	Percent
Personal payment
PayPal	30
Department store gift card	14
Supermarket card	35
(Subtotal)	(79)
Charity donation
Bowel Cancer Australia	6
Brain Foundation	5
Aboriginal Women’s Service	5
Bush Heritage Australia	3
Guide Dogs Victoria	2
(Subtotal)	(21)
Declined incentive	0.3
Total	100
(N)	(1,814)

Source. Australian cross-section, Comparative Study of Electoral Systems Survey, 2019, citizens only.

Political values are represented by three variables, corresponding to the three major elements of populism identified earlier. First, antielitism is a multiple-item scale that combines three items measuring the views of politicians. The first column in Table 3 shows that between 39% and 48% of the respondents agreed with the negative statements about politicians. Second, social homogeneity is measured by two items measuring the relationship between majority and minority rights. Almost 7 in 10 of the respondents agreed that minorities should integrate, but fewer, 38%, believed that the will of the majority should take precedence over the rights of minorities. Third, the sovereignty of the people is measured by a single item measuring the importance of people over politicians; half of the respondents agreed with the proposition. These three dimensions were confirmed by the factor analysis in the remaining columns of Table 3, which shows that they form three clear and distinct factors.

Table 3.

The Three Dimensions of Populism.

Survey Question	Percent agree	Factor loadings
Survey Question	Percent agree	1	2	3
Antielitism
Most politicians do not care about the people	46	.84	−.11	.08
Politicians are the main problem in Australia	39	.83	.06	.13
Most politicians care only about the interests of the rich and powerful	48	.74	.04	.34
Social homogeneity
Minorities should adapt to the customs and traditions of Australia	69	.06	.86	−.13
Will of the majority should always prevail even over the rights of minorities	38	−.07	.84	.19
People sovereign
The people, and not politicians, should make our most important policy decisions	50	.28	.04	.92
Eigenvalues		2.37	1.47	0.70
Variance explained		39.6	24.5	11.6

Source. As for Table 2.

Note. Factor analysis showing factor loadings from a principal component analysis using varimax rotation. Bold values denote major factor loadings. The question was: “Please indicate the extent to which you agree or disagree with the following statements . . . ?”

In addition to the three dimensions of populism, political values are measured by left–right self-placement. This is based on the question: “In politics people sometimes talk about the ‘left’ and the ‘right.’ Where would you place yourself on the same scale, where 0 means the left and 10 means the right?.” The mean value for the scale is 5.42, showing that the distribution follows the familiar bell curve. There have been only slight changes in this distribution over an extended period, indicating that it forms a fundamental political value largely separate from partisan politics.⁹

The full list of independent variables used in the analysis is shown in Table 4, together with their codes and descriptive statistics. Social background is measured by gender (Einolf, 2011; Newman, 2000), age, whether or not the person spoke English at home, and urban residence.¹⁰ Education is represented by whether or not the respondent’s highest qualification was postsecondary or tertiary, with those having less than a secondary qualification forming the excluded category. Income is measured in quintiles based on mean income of the local area.¹¹ Finally, religion is measured by whether or not the person said they had a religious affiliation and by the frequency of church attendance.¹²

Table 4.

Variables, Coding, Means.

Variable	Coding	M	SD
Incentive
Payment	1 = yes, 0 = no	0.79	0.41
Donation to Bowel Cancer	1 = yes, 0 = no	0.06	0.24
Donation to Brain Foundation	1 = yes, 0 = no	0.05	0.23
Donation to Bush Heritage	1 = yes, 0 = no	0.03	0.16
Donation to Aboriginal Women	1 = yes, 0 = no	0.05	0.22
Donation to Guide Dogs	1 = yes, 0 = no	0.02	0.14
Social background
Gender	1 = female, 0 = male	0.52	0.50
Age	Deciles	4.89	1.79
Non-English speaker	1 = yes, 0 = no	0.16	0.37
Urban resident	1 = yes, 0 = no	0.67	0.47
Postsecondary qualification	1 = yes, 0 = no	0.33	0.47
University qualification	1 = yes, 0 = no	0.28	0.45
Income	Quintiles	3.24	1.42
Religiosity
Believer	1 = yes, 0 = no	.58	.49
Church attendance	From 1 (never) to 6 (weekly or more)	2.54	1.53
Political values
Antielitism	Scale, from 0 to 10	5.42	2.41
Social homogeneity	Scale, from 0 to 10	5.99	2.54
People are sovereign	From 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree)	3.29	1.22
Left right self-placement	From 0 to 10	5.42	2.44

Source. As for Table 2.

Note. Populism and ethnocentrism are multiple-item scales; see Table 2 and text for details of the composition.

Method

Since our interest is in whether or not a respondent donated to a charity, and if they did which charity they chose, we estimate a multinomial logistic regression model. We also graph the marginal effects for the significant relationships.

Results

The main results are shown in Table 5 in the form of a multinomial logistic regression model, which shows the relationship between the independent variables and the choice of charity. Those who opted to accept a personal payment form the baseline model.

Table 5.

Political Values and Donations.

	Bowel Cancer		Brain Foundation		Bush Heritage		Aboriginal Women		Guide Dogs
Independent Variables	β	(SE)	β	(SE)	β	(SE)	β	(SE)	β	(SE)
Social background
Gender	−.72**	(0.22)	−.34	(0.22)	−.45	(.32)	.09	(.24)	.05	(.36)
Age	.42**	(0.01)	.59**	(0.08)	.24**	(.09)	.48**	(.08)	.44**	(.12)
Non-English speaker	.38	(0.29)	.46	(0.32)	.66	(.35)	−.42	(.40)	.29	(.54)
Urban resident	−.13	(0.26)	−.27	(0.26)	−.36	(.34)	−.31	(.28)	.38	(.41)
University qualification	−.08	(0.32)	.54	(0.30)	.55	(.33)	.92**	(.34)	−.16	(.55)
Postsecondary qualification	1.03**	(0.25)	.55*	(0.27)	−.35	(.38)	1.12**	(.32)	.30	(.39)
Income	.19*	(0.08)	.15	(0.09)	.08	(0.11)	.18	(0.10)	.01	(0.13)
Religion
Believer	.15	(0.25)	.46	(0.26)	.22	(0.32)	−.31	(0.28)	−.19	(0.42)
Church attendance	−.02	(0.07)	−.18*	(0.08)	.02	(0.10)	.04	(0.09)	.01	(0.13)
Political values
Antielitism	−.05	(0.05)	−.06	(0.05)	.01	(0.07)	−.03	(0.06)	−.07	(0.08)
Social homogeneity	.03	(0.05)	−.13**	(0.05)	−.05	(0.06)	−.20**	(0.05)	.24**	(0.09)
People are sovereign	−.23*	(0.09)	.14	(0.10)	.05	(0.13)	−.10	(0.11)	.06	(0.16)
Left right self-placement	−.07	(0.05)	−.03	(0.05)	−.17**	(0.07)	−.15**	(0.06)	−.08	(0.08)
Intercept	−5.16		−5.77		−4.04		−3.89		−7.34
Nagelkerke R²	.20

Source. As for Table 2.

Note. Multinomial logistic regression shows parameter estimates (β) and SEs (in parentheses) predicting the probability of donating to a charity. The baseline category is those who opted to receive money. N = 1,765. See Tables 2 –4 for details of variables and scoring.

p < .05. **p < .01.

With regard to the impact of populist values, the results show that two of the three values are significant predictors of charity donations. Most important is social homogeneity, which is a significant predictor of donating to the Brain Foundation, the Aboriginal Women’s Service, and Guide Dogs Victoria. Those stressing the importance of social homogeneity are less likely to donate to the first two charities, and more likely to donate to the third, other things being equal. The marginal effects for the effect of social homogeneity on donations to the three charities are shown in Figure 1. While the results do not provide support for Hypothesis 3, there is support for Hypothesis 4, namely that social homogeneity shapes which charities a person is likely to donate to. The antipathy toward the Aboriginal Women’s Service may relate to feelings of ethnocentrism, while Guide Dogs Victoria could be viewed as more socially inclusive.

Figure 1.

Interactive effects of donations and populist values.

In addition to social homogeneity, holding beliefs about the sovereignty of the people significantly reduces the likelihood of donating to Bowel Cancer Australia; there is no significant effect for any of the other charities. Once again, the first chart in Figure 1 shows the effect graphically. The evidence is therefore insufficient to support Hypothesis 2. While explanations for this finding must be speculative, the answer may rest in the role of government in the prevention of the disease. Australia has one of the highest rates of bowel cancer in the world and since 2006, the government has implemented a high profile screening program ( While the program has had some success, the disease is still the second biggest cause of cancer deaths among the general population (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2019). Those with a strong view about the sovereignty of the people may well be responding to the central role of government in attempting to reduce mortality due to the disease.

Finally, Hypothesis 1 predicts that those with antielitist views would be less likely to donate; there is no statistically significant effect for antielitism shaping donations to any of the five charities and we therefore reject Hypothesis 1. The fourth political value, the person’s position on the left–right continuum, matters for two of the charities, Bush Heritage Australia and the Aboriginal Women’s Service, and in both cases those on the right are least likely to donate, as Figure 2 illustrates.

Figure 2.

Interactive effects of donations and left–right position.

Among the social background factors, the most important predictor—and indeed easily the most important in the whole model—is age. For every one of the five charities, older people are more likely to give than younger people. This confirms the finding of the international research (Andreoni et al., 2003; Chrenka et al., 2003) and occurs because as people age, they gain more social capital and life experience and therefore have more empathy with the problems that others may face in their lives. Education is also important, with those possessing a postsecondary or a tertiary qualification donating more than those with fewer educational attainments. This is related to the better educated being more aware of the wider issues that affect citizens and generally being more altruistic (Lee & Chang, 2007; Yen, 2002). Among the other social background variables, there is no effect for being a non-English speaker, urban residence, or income (with the exception of a minor effect for the better off donating to Bowel Cancer Australia). Finally, we find little or no effect for religion, reflected in whether or not the person had a religious affiliation and attended church (Vaidyanathan et al., 2011).

Overall, these results underpin the overarching importance of political values in determining the likelihood of making a charitable donation. If a donation is made, political values are also central in determining which charity the person might choose to donate to. That values have such a substantial effect, even after a wide range of other political factors are taken into account, further confirms the significance of a person’s political value structure in determining their attitudes toward charitable giving. Political values are more important than any other factor in the model with the exception of age. For charitable giving, the decision to donate is shaped by the deeply held political values that the person holds.

Conclusion

Political values have the potential to play a key role in underpinning charitable giving, although it is an area that has been under-studied.¹³ In this article, we have compared the importance of a set of political values in shaping charitable giving, as well as examine their role in identifying which charity a person might choose to donate to. The results confirm other research, which has emphasized the importance of moral values in determining who donates (Fowler & Kam, 2007; Winterich et al., 2012). However, our research has extended these findings to highlight the importance of populist values, defined as the three major dimensions of populism: antielitism, social homogeneity, and the sovereignty of the people. As our results highlight, the predominant value for the purposes of charitable giving is social homogeneity, followed by the sovereignty of the people.

Using a unique survey that allowed the respondents to an election survey to choose to take payment for their participation or to make a charitable donation, the contribution of this study to the research is threefold. First, we have demonstrated the importance of values against social background and religion. The findings suggest that charitable giving is a learned behavior, which has its roots in the values that are formed in childhood socialization (Green et al., 2002). We know from the research that such childhood socialization influences political attitudes decades later (Jennings et al., 2009), but this study shows that the values that emerge influence the likelihood of making a charitable donation as well. In other words, the roots of donating rest at least as much in what may have happened to the individual decades before during their childhood years as much as in their current socioeconomic circumstances.

The second finding is that the importance of values extends not just to the more familiar left versus right or liberal versus conservatives dimension, but to the newer values of populism. Since the 1980s, populism has come to dominate the politics of many of the advanced democracies, combining a “revolt against the established structure of power in the name of the people” with “an attack on elite values” (Canovan, 1999, p. 3). The influence of populism across many political systems has been pervasive, but our study is the first to demonstrate its impact on charitable giving. The political distrust that populism feeds off has major implications for charities, with those holding such views bracketing some charities with the political elite, and as a consequence withholding donations from them. Populism, therefore, has a key role to play in determining which charities a person chooses to donate to, based on the charity’s public profile.

For charitable and nonprofit organizations, the implication of the findings presented here is that populist values will have to be integrated into their public appeals. Since many of the elements that combine to form populism—such as antielitism and the national interest—are in opposition to what many of these organizations espouse, this will present a major challenge for the main charities. However, it is clear that populism, and the form of politics that it promotes, is unlikely to decline at least in the medium term. Charitable organizations need to better understand populism in order not to be unduly disadvantaged by it.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors thank three anonymous reviewers and the editor or their constructive comments on an earlier draft of the article.

Authors’ Note

The 2019 Australian cross-section of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems survey is publicly available from the Australian Data Archive at .

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Ian McAllister

Notes

Author Biographies

Ian McAllister is a distinguished professor of political science at The Australian National University, Canberra. He has been a codirector of the Australian Election Study since 1987.

Toni Makkai is an emeritus professor of criminology at The Australian National University and was previously the dean of the College of Arts and Social Sciences at The Australian National University.

References

Andreoni

Brown

Rischall

(2003). Charitable giving by married couples who decides and why does it matter? Journal of Human Resources, 38(1), 111–133.

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2019). Deaths in Australia. AIHW. https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/life-expectancy-death/deaths-in-australia

Barr

R. R.

(2009). Populists, outsiders and anti-establishment politics. Party Politics, 15(1), 29–48.

Bekkers

(2005). Participation in voluntary associations: Relations with resources, personality, and political values. Political Psychology, 26(3), 439–454.

Bekkers

Wiepking

(2006). To give or not to give, that’s the question. How methodology is destiny in Dutch Data. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 35(3), 533–540.

Bekkers

Wiepking

(2011). A literature review of empirical studies of philanthropy: Eight mechanisms that drive charitable giving. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 40(5), 924–973.

Belfield

C. R.

Beney

A. P.

(2000). What determines alumni generosity? Evidence for the UK. Education Economics, 8(1), 65–80.

Bennett

(2003). Factors underlying the inclination to donate to particular types of charity. International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing, 8(1), 12–29.

Bergh

(2004). Protest voting in Austria, Denmark and Norway. Scandinavian Political Studies, 27(4), 367–389.

10.

Boatright

R. G.

Green

D. P.

Malbin

M. J.

(2006). Does publicizing a tax credit for political contributions increase its use? Results from a randomized field experiment. American Politics Research, 34(4), 563–582.

11.

Brooks

A. C.

(2005). Does social capital make you generous? Social Science Quarterly, 86(1), 1–15.

12.

Brooks

A. C.

(2007). Who really cares: The surprising truth about compassionate conservatism. Basic Books.

13.

Brown

Ferris

J. M.

(2007). Social capital and philanthropy: An analysis of the impact of social capital on individual giving and volunteering. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 36(1), 85–99.

14.

Cameron

McAllister

(2019). Trends in Australian political behaviour, 1987-2019. Australian National University. https://australianelectionstudy.org/

15.

Canovan

(1999). Trust the people! Populism and the two faces of democracy. Political Studies, 47(1), 1–16.

16.

Canovan

(2002). Taking politics to the people: Populism as the ideology of democracy. In Mény

Surel

(Eds.), Democracies and the populist challenge (pp. 25–44). Palgrave Macmillan.

17.

Charitable Aid Foundation. (2018). World Giving Index 2018: A global view of giving trends. https://www.cafonline.org/about-us/publications/2018-publications/caf-world-giving-index-2018

18.

Chrenka

Gutter

M. S.

Jasper

(2003). Gender differences in the decision to give time or money. Consumer Interests Annual, 40(1), 1–4.

19.

Collins

(1985). Political ideology in Australia: The distinctiveness of a benthamite society. Daedalus, 114(1), 147–169.

20.

Einolf

C. J.

(2011). Gender differences in the correlates of volunteering and charitable giving. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 40(6), 1092–1112.

21.

Flithcroft

K. L.

Salkeld

G. P.

Gillespie

J. A.

Trevena

L. J.

Irwig

L. M.

(2010). Fifteen years of bowel cancer screening policy in Australia. Medical Journal of Australia, 193(1), 37–42.

22.

Fowler

J. H.

Kam

C. D.

(2007). Beyond the self: Social identity, altruism, and political participation. Journal of Politics, 69(3), 813–827.

23.

Francia

P. L.

Green

J. C.

Herrnson

P. S.

Powell

L. W.

Wilcox

(2005). Limousine liberals and corporate conservatives: The financial constituencies of the democratic and republican parties. Social Science Quarterly, 86(4), 761–778.

24.

Gittell

Tebaldi

(2006). Charitable giving: Factors influencing giving in U.S. States. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 35(4), 721–736.

25.

Green

D. P.

Palmquist

Schickler

(2002). Partisan hearts and minds. Yale University Press.

26.

Halman

(2007). Political values. In Klingemann

H. D.

Dalton

R. J.

(Eds.), The Oxford handbook of political behavior (pp. 3–26). Oxford University Press.

27.

Hancock

W. K.

(1930). Australia. Ernest Benn.

28.

Havens

J. J.

O’Herlihy

M. A.

Schervish

P. G.

(2007). Charitable giving: How much, by whom, to what, and how? In Powell

W. W.

Steinberg

R. S.

(Eds.), The non-profit sector: A research handbook (pp. 243–66). Yale University Press.

29.

Jennings

M. K.

Stoker

Bowers

(2009). Politics across generations: Family transmission re-examined. Journal of Politics, 71(3), 782–799.

30.

Lavezzolo

Ramiro

(2018). Stealth democracy and the support for new and challenger parties. European Political Science Review, 10(2), 267–289.

31.

Lee

Y. K.

Chang

C. T.

(2007). Who gives what to charity? Characteristics affecting donation behavior. Social Behavior and Personality, 35(9), 1173–1180.

32.

Mair

(2007). Left-right orientations. In Klingemann

H. D.

Dalton

R. J.

(Eds.), The Oxford handbook of political behavior (pp. 3–28). Oxford University Press.

33.

McDonald

Scaife

(2011). Print media portrayals of giving: Exploring national “cultures of philanthropy.” International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing, 16(4), 311–324.

34.

Mesch

D. J.

Rooney

P. M.

Steinberg

K. S.

Denton

(2006). The effects of race, gender, and marital status on giving and volunteering in Indiana. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 35(4), 565–587.

35.

Moffitt

(2016). The global rise of populism. Stanford University Press.

36.

Mudde

(2004). The populist zeitgeist. Government and Opposition, 39(4), 541–563.

37.

Newman

(2000). Gender differences in philanthropy. Fund-Raising Management, 31(1), 28–29.

38.

Norris

(2011). Democratic deficit: Critical citizens revisited. Cambridge University Press.

39.

Norris

Inglehart

(2019). Cultural backlash: Trump, Brexit, and authoritarian populism. Cambridge University Press.

40.

Paarlberg

L. E.

Nesbit

Clerkin

R. M.

Christensen

R. K.

(2019). The politics of donations: Are red counties more donative than blue counties? Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 48(2), 283–308.

41.

Pappas

T. S.

(2016). Modern populism: Research advances, conceptual and methodological pitfalls, and the minimal definition “Oxford research Encyclopedia.” Oxford University Press.

42.

Pauwels

(2014). Populism in Western Europe. Comparing Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands. Routledge.

43.

Sargeant

Woodliffe

(2007). Individual giving behaviour: A multi-disciplinary review. In Sargeant

Wymer

(Eds.), The nonprofit marketing companion (pp. 111–144). Routledge.

44.

Scaife

McDonald

Williamson

Mossel

(2015). Giving in Australia: Philanthropic potential beginning to be realized. In Wiepking

Handy

(Eds.), The Palgrave handbook of global philanthropy (pp. 488–505). Palgrave Macmillan.

45.

Schulz

Müller

Schemer

Wirz

D. S.

Wettstein

Wirth

(2018). Measuring populist attitudes on three dimensions. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 30(2), 316–326.

46.

Taggart

(2000). Populism. Open University Press.

47.

Tam Cho

W. K

. (2002). Tapping motives and dynamics behind campaign contributions: Insights from the Asian American case. American Politics Research, 30(2), 347–383.

48.

Thomsson

K. M.

Vostroknutov

(2017). Small-world conservatives and rigid liberals: Attitudes towards sharing in self-proclaimed left and right. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 135(1), 181–192.

49.

Vaidyanathan

Hill

J. P.

Smith

(2011). Religion and charitable financial giving to religious and secular causes: Does political ideology matter? Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 50(3), 450–469.

50.

Vesterlund

(2006). Why do people give? In Powell

W. W.

Steinberg

R. S.

(Eds.), The non-profit sector: A research handbook (pp. 321–339). Yale University Press.

51.

Wiepking

Scaife

McDonald

(2012). Motives and barriers to bequest giving. Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 11(1), 56–66.

52.

Wilson

(2000). Volunteering. Annual Review of Sociology, 26, 215–240.

53.

Winterich

K. P.

Zhang

Mittal

(2012). How political identity and charity positioning increase donations: Insights from moral foundations theory. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 29(2), 346–354.

54.

Yen

S. T.

(2002). An econometric analysis of household donations in the USA. Applied Economics Letters, 9, 837–841.

55.

Zulianello

(2020). Varieties of populist parties and party systems in Europe: From state-of-the-art to the application of a novel classification scheme to 66 parties in 33 countries. Government and Opposition, 55(2), 327–347.