The effect of religion on Muslims’ charitable contributions to members of a non‐Muslim majority

• Published date: 01 April 2020
• Author: Rebecca B. Morton,Kai Ou,Xiangdong Qin
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jpet.12352
• Date: 01 April 2020

Received: 29 September 2017

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Accepted: 20 November 2018

DOI: 10.1111/jpet.12352

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

The effect of religion on Muslims’charitable

contributions to members of a non‐Muslim

majority

Rebecca B. Morton

1

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Kai Ou

2

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Xiangdong Qin

3

1

Department of Politics, New York University,

New York, New York

2

Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida

3

Department of Applied Economics, Shanghai

Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China

Correspondence

Rebecca B. Morton, NYU Political Science, 19

West 4th Street, New York New York, 10012.

Email: rebecca.morton@nyu.edu

Funding information

Chinese National Social Science Fund Project,

Grant/Award Number: 11BJY008

We investigate the effects of religion on charitable

contributions of Muslims who are in a minority to non‐

Muslims who are in a majority and to fellow Muslims. We

find that religious thinking leads to significantly more

charitable giving by 10%. The effect of religious thinking is

dependent on the ethnic identity of the recipient. We find a

significant effect on giving behavior toward relatively more

privileged out‐group members (Han Chinese), but a small

and generally insignificant effect toward in‐group members

(fellow Muslims). With religious thinking, prosocial behavior

toward out‐group members is significantly higher by 14%,

which is mainly explained by the religiosity of Muslims. Our

results have implications for our understanding of the

influence of Islamic rules on Muslims’attitudes and behavior

toward non‐Muslims and for the design of fundraising

mechanisms in Muslim communities.

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INTRODUCTION

What motivates individuals to voluntarily contribute to charitable activities when the recipient is a member of

an ethnic or racial group which is generally perceived as more privileged than their own? Considerable

experimental research has examined the motivations behind charitable contributions generally. To our

knowledge, there has been little experimental study of this type of giving behavior. The warm glow hypothesis

provides a direction for research in which donations and giving enter directly into utility functions (e.g.,

Andreoni, 1989, 1990; Arrow, 1972). This hypothesis has been tested and justified in experimental studies (e.g.,

Andreoni, 1995; Andreoni, Rao, & Trachtman, 2017; Crumpler & Grossman, 2008; Harbaugh, Mayr, & Burghart,

2007; Null, 2011), and it is widely used in the design of fundraising strategies. In studies on promoting

charitable giving and contributions to public goods from which individuals derive no direct consumption

benefits, the effective strategies include the public display of identity (e.g., Andreoni & Petrie, 2004; Alpizar,

J Public Econ Theory. 2020;22:433–448. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jpet © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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Carlsson, & Johansson‐Stenman, 2008; Rege & Telle, 2004) and emphasizing the shared identity of receivers.

These strategies are believed to increase the donors’utility value from giving. Yet, what if individuals do not

share identities and in fact the recipients are viewed to have an identity that gives them greater status or

power in the larger society?

Fundraisers and charities also appeal to religion, as religion functions as a moral compass and has been found to

promote contributions to public goods (e.g., Benjamin, Choi, & Fisher, 2016) and increase donations (e.g., Lambarraa &

Riener, 2015). Religiosity and religious precepts can motivate individuals who have altruistic tendencies (both pure and

impure) to give and donate because it containsmessages that often emphasize others’benefits from one’s behavior (e.g.,

Bergstrom, Blume, & Varian, 1986; Bernheim, 1986; Roberts, 1984; Warr, 1982). Nevertheless, to our knowledge, there

has been no study of the extent that these religious messages can promote giving to those who are nonbelievers and

even members of a group that is more privileged and in some ways limit the religious practices of the believers.

This paper reports the results of a “lab‐in‐the‐field”experiment designed to isolate and measure the mechanism

of how Islamic rules influence Muslims’giving behavior to non‐Muslims, who are part of a majority privileged group.

We conducted our experiment with non‐Western subjects (Muslims in China) in contrast to most previous studies

that examined mainly Western students. We designed a novel experiment that is based on a collective giving game.

That is, a group of Muslim subjects vote to decide whether the group collectively gives an amount of money to a

verified needy receiver. We manipulated the treatment by varying the amount of money to be transferred, the

identity of the receiver (whether Muslim Chinese who is a member of the minority or Han Chinese who is a

member of the majority and privileged group), whether subjects engaged in a religious thinking exercise before

voting, and the privacy of the decision‐making environment.

We find that in the absence of religious thinking exercise, the frequency of Muslims’giving behavior when the

receiver is an in‐group member (fellow Muslim) is not statistically distinguishable from Muslims’giving behavior

when the receiver is an out‐group member (Han Chinese). Compared with the baseline, we find that religious

thinking leads to significantly more charitable giving by 10%. The effect of religious thinking is dependent on the

ethnic identity of the recipient. We find a significant effect on giving behavior toward relatively more privileged

out‐group members (Han Chinese), but a small and generally insignificant effect toward in‐group members (fellow

Muslims). With religious thinking, prosocial behavior toward out‐group members is significantly higher by 14%,

which is mainly explained by the religiosity of Muslims.

Our study has strong empirical and policy implications in several ways. First, our study provides new evidence

on the extent that the religiosity of Muslims treats Muslim and non‐Muslims/nonbelievers equally, which implies

that religious thinking alone may not be a force toward violence toward nonbelievers. Second, our study improves

our understanding of the influence of Islamic rules on Muslims’giving behavior that has implications for the design

of fundraising mechanisms in Islamic countries and Muslim communities. Our results imply that methods that are

effective to Westerners on promoting giving and donations may result in negative outcomes when applied to

Muslims. In future research on fundraising campaigns in Muslim communities, scholars and charities need to

consider the fundamental effects of religion and the effects of religiosity that we isolate in this study.

In the next section, we describe our experimental procedures and the design of treatments. In Section 3, we

analyze the experimental results, and in Section 4, we discuss the implications of the results for the

effects of religiousthinking and understandingcharitable giving behaviortoward others (in‐and out‐group members).

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EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN

2.1

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Location and subjects

Our experiment was conducted in Yinchuan, the capital city of China’s Ningxia Hui (Muslim) Autonomous Region,

using a total of 480 student subjects, who were randomly recruited from different departments and colleges at a

representative public university in the area. The Hui Chinese are Muslims, and they practice Islam. The population

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