Donation Behavior for Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector: The Role of Compassion

The nonprofit and voluntary sector also known as the third sector economy plays a key role for human and ecological sustainable wellbeing in order to address the critical situations of poverty, depleted resources, welfare and social exclusion. One way to grow and sustain the sector is by getting contributions and donations from other organizations or individual persons. Building on the revised Theory of Planned Behavior, this research attempts to explore what motivates people to donate, and determine if compassion plays a role of a moderator. Based on the structural model, the findings indicate attitude, perceived behavioral control, descriptive norm and moral norms are significant predictors to donation behavior. In addition, the relationship between moral norm and donation behavior is stronger when compassion is higher. The findings would be beneficial in putting up strategies to strengthen the nonprofit and voluntary sector by focusing on the social psychology attitudes for others and from others. As the study did not control for the size of the nonprofit organizations, we suggest future research to consider on the limitation that would be consistent with the “impact model of philanthropy†that postulates for maximum impact donation especially for sustainable wellbeing.