Recipients' happiness in prosocial spending: The role of social ties

• Published date: 01 December 2021
• Author: Wuke Zhang,Jing Pan,Jiaoyang Liu,Yuchen Zhang,Mingliang Chen
• Date: 01 December 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/joca.12312

SPECIAL ISSUE

Recipients' happiness in prosocial spending:

The role of social ties

Wuke Zhang

1

| Jing Pan

1

| Jiaoyang Liu

1

| Yuchen Zhang

1

|

Mingliang Chen

2

1

Business School and the Academy of

Neuroeconomics and Neuromanagement,

Ningbo University, Ningbo, China

2

School of Management, Zhejiang

University, Hangzhou, China

Correspondence

Mingliang Chen, School of Management,

Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.

Email: chenml@zju.edu.cn

Funding information

the Project of Philosophy and Social

Science Key Research Base of Zhejiang

Province, Grant/Award Number:

20JDZD024; Zhejiang Provincial Natural

Science Foundation of China, Grant/

Award Number: LQ20G020010; National

Nature Science Foundation of China,

Grant/Award Number: 71942002; Ningbo

University, Grant/Award Number:

XYW19001; K.C. Wong Magna Fund in

Ningbo University

Abstract

In the past decade, a growing body of studies has

explored spenders' happiness in prosocial spending

(i.e., spending money on others). However, the happi-

ness of recipients has been frequently ignored. Consid-

ering that most prosocial spending behaviors can be

seen as a particular form of social interactions and

emotional outcomes of social interactions depend on

whom people interact with, the current study attempts

to explore the influence of the social ties between

spenders and recipients (strong vs. weak social ties) on

recipients' happiness. More specifically, the present

study also attempts to explain this influence from the

aspect of basic psychological needs (i.e., relatedness,

competence, and autonomy) satisfaction. Results of

two studies reveal that gifts from strong social ties lead

to recipients' greater happiness than those from weak

social ties. Notably, relatedness satisfaction and compe-

tence satisfaction, but not autonomy satisfaction,

explain this happiness effect of social ties.

1|INTRODUCTION

In the last decade, a growing body of studies has explored the positive relationship between

prosocial spending (i.e., spending one's money on someone else) and spenders' happiness

(Dunn et al., 2008, 2014; Aknin et al., 2011, 2013a, 2013b; Yamaguchi et al., 2016). However,

recipients' happiness in prosocial spending has been frequently ignored in previous studies. In

Received: 17 May 2019 Revised: 11 February 2020 Accepted: 13 April 2020

DOI: 10.1111/joca.12312

© 2020 American Council on Consumer Interests

J Consum Aff. 2021;55:1333–1351. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/joca 1333

real life, people frequently spend their money to let recipients get gifts and even favors, gener-

ally with the purpose of getting recipients happy. If prosocial spending dose not has a positive

effect on recipients' happiness, spenders' emotional benefits in prosocial spending seem to be

not unleashed (Zhang et al., 2017). From this point, recipients' happiness is closely associated

with spenders' happiness and interests in prosocial spending and should be further studied.

Unlike traditional prosocial behaviors (e.g., donation), prosocial spending behaviors like

purchasing gifts for others (e.g., family members, coworkers, friends) seem to widely exist in

people's daily social life, and most of them can be seen as a particular form of social interac-

tions. Considering that emotional outcomes of social interactions depend on who people inter-

act with (Sandstrom and Dunn, 2014b), the current study attempts to investigate whether

receiving gifts from different social ties will lead to recipients' different happiness.

As a primary and explorative study on recipients' happiness in prosocial spending, the cur-

rent study attempts to use a simple and well-accepted way to classify the social ties between

spenders and recipients, which focuses on the level of intimacy (VanLear et al., 2006; Aknin

et al., 2011). In more detail, previous studies label social ties that involve less frequent contact,

lower emotional intensity, and limited intimacy as weak social ties (Granovetter, 1973;

Krackhardt et al., 2003). These social ties are often considered in contrast to strong social ties

with close friends, romantic partners and family members (Granovetter, 1973, Krackhardt

et al., 2003). Additionally, the same classifying way of social ties (i.e., strong vs. weak social ties)

has also been accepted and used by previous happiness studies (Aknin et al., 2011; Sandstrom

and Dunn, 2014b; Venaglia and Lemay, 2017). For example, a former study on prosocial spend-

ing has found that spending money on strong social ties leads to spenders' greater happiness

than spending on weak ones (Aknin et al., 2011). Another study has also classified social ties

into strong vs. weak social ties, and further explored the effect of interactions with weak social

ties on people's happiness (Sandstrom and Dunn, 2014b).

Extending previous prosocial spending studies from the recipient perspective, the current

study aims to explore the effect of social ties between spenders and recipients on recipients' hap-

piness in daily prosocial spending. In order to better understand the effect of social ties on recip-

ients' happiness, the present study further aims to explore this effect from the aspect of basic

psychological needs (i.e., relatedness, competence and autonomy) satisfaction (Deci and

Ryan, 2000), which has been found to be some of the most consistently supported mediators

between people's activities and happiness (Ryan and Deci, 2000, 2001; Guevarra and

Howell, 2015; Yamaguchi et al., 2016).

1.1 |Literature review and hypotheses

1.1.1 |The concept of prosocial spending

The concept of prosocial spending, to the best of our knowledge, was first proposed in 2008

(Dunn et al., 2008) and it referred to all behaviors that spending one's money on someone else

(Dunn et al., 2008). The authors proposed this concept to differentiate behaviors that spending

money on others (i.e., prosocial spending) from behaviors that spending money on one's self

(i.e., personal spending). And then they found that prosocial spending had a larger positive

effect on people's happiness than personal spending (Dunn et al., 2008). In the past decade,

researchers have explored many different types of prosocial spending to study its positive effect

on spenders' happiness, such as buying gifts for others (Dunn et al., 2008), donations to charity

1334 ZHANG ET AL.