william ashton, ph.d. city university of new york, york college epa, 2006

1William Ashton, Ph.D. City University of New York, York College EPA, 2006

Charitable Giving Following the 2004 Tsunami: Social Impact Theory and Was America

Stingy? William Ashton, Ph.D.

Department of Behavioral Sciences

City University of New York – York College

Eastern Psychological Association Meeting

March 17, 2006

Baltimore, MD


What Happened

•7:59 a.m. local time on December 26, 2004• 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck the waters off the Sri Lankan coast •Tsunami reached the shores of eight countries.•Over 230,000 people were killed and an equal number were injured•5 million more were in need of some form of emergency relief—medical attention, shelter, clothes, food

- U.N. Foundation, The Indian Ocean tsunami: One year after the disaster.


Unprecedented Need for Charity

•governments donated $6 billion•relief agencies and the international financial institutions donated $2.3 billion •private and corporate donations accounted for over $5.1 billion

- U.N. Foundation, The Indian Ocean tsunami: One year after the disaster.


Stingy?

“[T]he foreign assistance of many countries now is 0.1 or 0.2 percent of their gross national income. I think that is stingy really. I don't think that is very generous." -- Jan Egeland, the UN's Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, January 26 or 27, 2004


U.S. Response

“TSUNAMI DISASTER: US RESPONDS TO CRITICS BY INCREASING AID TO $ 350M

AFTER AN international outcry and widespread dismay, the United States last night increased 10-fold its contribution of aid to help survivors of the Asian tsunami disaster, from $ 35m to $ 350m -- The Independent (UK), January 1, 2005


A Lasting Stigma of Stinginess

“Presentation of the [2006 Foreign Aid] budget immediately re-opened the debate, in the wake of the Asian tsunami disaster, over whether the US was stingy, compared with other rich nations.” -- Financial Times (London, England), February 8, 2005

“One of the lessons of the tsunami a year ago is that however stingy we Americans have been in giving foreign aid, we want to do better.” -- New York Times, January 10, 2006


Purpose of Analysis

1. Objectively examine U.S. giving to answer the question, Was the U.S. Stingy?

2. Examine the application of Social-Psychological principles to the relationships between giving and other variables.

1. What other variables?


Latane’ (1981) reported on

Basset and Latane’s study

•Varied the status, distance and the number of people involved in a news story about a catastrophe

•Participants were asked to play the role of newspaper editor and allocate an amount of newspaper coverage to the story

•The allocated coverage were predicted by SIT


Social Impact Theory – SIT

Social Impact is a function of:

•Strength (status)

•Immediacy, and

•Number of sources


Tsunami: SIT Variables

Social Impact is a function of:

•Strength (status) – unoperationalized

•Immediacy and – distance from Banda Aceh

•Number of sources – number of dead county-persons


Data

Donations – Reuters report as of January 6, 2005

Dead – Associated Press estimates as of January 1, 2005.

Distance – Miles from Banda Aceh to capital city of country


Control Variable

Gross Domestic Product -- value of final goods and services produced within a country's borders in a year, regardless of ownership. An indicator of standard of living. More disposable than Gross National Product.

Source for GDP – CIA World Factbook


Analysis Plan1. MRC on All Countries – Test Elements of SIT

a. analysis of regression2. MRC – U.S. Removed – Test of U.S. Stinginess

a. Using SIT elementsi. MRCii. prediction and confidence interval

b. Using only significant predictors i. MRCii. prediction and confidence interval


Descriptives

Variable Mean Std. Deviation N

GDP 1.2207E+12(1.2 Trillion Dollars)

2.3896E+12 27

Distance 5310.5926 1804.2107 27

Private Giving

136.3882(Million Dollars)

293.7700 11

Government Giving

120.2110(Million Dollars)

206.9671 27

Dead 13.4444 16.3362 27


Correlations

Gov’t Give

Private Give

GDP Distance Dead

Gov’t Give

.328 .357 .021(should be negative)

.544**

Private Give

.999** .847**(should be negative)

.501

GDP .239 .334

Distance .152

*p<.05; ** p<.01, ***p<.0001


GDP, Dead & Distance on Government GivingGDP entered first; Dead & Distance entered secondModel 1 (GDP), R^2=.128, p>.05Model 2 (GDP & Dead)

Variable B SE B β

Constant 78.194 110.132

GDP 1.906E-11 .000 .220

Distance -1.21E-02 .020 -.105 (GPD & Dead are acting as suppressors)

Dead 6.161 2.283 .486*

*p<.05; ** p<.01, ***p<.0001

Model R^2=.3418, p<.05; Δ R^2=.213, p<.05


GDP, Distance & Dead on Private GivingGDP entered first; Distance & Dead entered secondModel 1 (GDP), R^2=.998, p<.0001Model 2 (GDP, Distance & Dead)

Variable B SE B β

Constant -18.168 50.296

GDP 9.009E-11 .000 .985***

Distance 1.824E-03 .009 .008

Dead .227 .329 .016

*p<.05; ** p<.01, ***p<.0001

Model R^2=.998, p<.0001; Δ R^2=.0, p>.05


Summary of Whole Data Set

Government Giving

•Dead is significantly related to government giving

•When Dead and GDP are entered, Distance changes to its predicted direction (though weak)

Moderate Support for SITModerate Support for SIT

Private Giving

•GDP is significantly related to Private Giving

No Support for SITNo Support for SIT


Next Set of Analyses

•Remove U.SRemove U.S.

•Calculate a Regression Equation

•Predict U.S. Giving and Confidence Interval

•Compare to Actual U.S. Data


GDP, Dead & Distance on Government GivingGDP entered first; Distance & Dead entered secondModel 1 (GDP), R^2=.098, p>.05Model 2 (GDP & Dead)

Variable B SE B β

Constant 44.049 130.491

GDP 3.025E-11 .000 .207

Distance -6.83E-03 .023 -.055 (zero order is neg)

Dead 6.121 2.322 .476*

*p<.05; ** p<.01, ***p<.0001

Model R^2=.315, p<.05; Δ R^2=.217, p<.05


y-hat = 44.049 + GDP * 3.025E-11 + Distance * 6.83E-03 + Dead * 6.121

U.S. Dead = 36; Distance = 9340; GDP = 1.1E+13y=hat U.S. = 44.049 + 1.1E+13 * 3.025E-11 + 9340 * 6.83E-03 + 36 * 6.121y-hat U.S. = 661 million dollarsSE-Y-hat=115.4596; n=2695% Confidence Interval of +/- 239.46661+/- 239.46 ~= 222 to 900 Million

•Actual Government Giving = 350 Million

•U.S. was not stingy – giving was within the confidence interval.


GDP, Dead & Distance on Private GivingGDP entered first; Distance & Dead entered secondModel 1 (GDP), R^2=.951, p<.0001Model 2 (GDP & Dead)

Variable B SE B β

Constant -.179 34.483

GDP 4.710E-11 .000 .510*

Distance -8.63E-04 .006 -.008‡

Dead 4.734 4.076 .202

*p<.05; ** p<.01, ***p<.0001

Model R^2=.982, p<.0001; Δ R^2=.031, p<.05


y-hat = -.179 + GDP * 4.710E-11 + Distance * -8.63E-04 + Dead * 4.734y-hat U.S. = 680 Million DollarsSE-y-hat = 68.1708; n=1095% Confidence Interval = +/- 154.202680 +/-154.202 ~= 526 to 834

•Actual Private Giving = 1,000 Million

•Private U.S. Citizens gave more than what would have been predicted.


For the MRC Purists …

Repeat above analysis with:

U.S. removed (as before)

Only using significant predictors (new):

•Government Giving – Dead

•Private Giving - GDP


Dead on Government GivingR^2=.265, p<.01Model (Dead)

Variable B SE B β

Constant 28.152 45.425

Dead 6.617 2.249 .515**

* p<.05; ** p<.01, ***p<.0001


y-hat = 28.152+ Dead * 6.617y-hat U.S. = 266.364 Million DollarsSE-y-hat = 105.9566; n=2695% Confidence Interval = +/- 218.69266 +/-218 ~= 47 to 485

•Actual Government Giving = 350 Million

•U.S. Government giving within confidence interval.


GDP on Private GivingR^2=.951, p<.0001Model (GDP)

Variable B SE B β

Constant -4.369 6.751

GDP 8.996E-11 .000 .975***

* p<.05; ** p<.01, ***p<.0001


y-hat = -4.369+ GDP * 8.996E-11y-hat U.S. = 985.191 Million Dollarsn=10SE-y-hat = 67.076695% Confidence Interval = +/- 154.679985 +/- 155 ~= 830 to 1140

•Actual Private Giving = 1,000 Million

•U.S. Citizens gave what would have been predicted.


Summary of Concurrent Predictions

U.S. Source

Private Government

Predictors

SIT More than Predicted

As Predicted

Significant As Predicted

As Predicted


Conclusions

U.S. was not stingy.

For government giving, SIT worked well

Private citizens respond to media images and gave “’till it hurt (GDP)”; thus are not affected by SIT variables.

Politicians have learned to think in terms of local neighbors (distance) and constituents (dead or relatives of the dead); thus are affected by these variables.


To download this slideshow, please go to:

www.york.cuny.edu/~washton/research/tsunami.ppt

william ashton, ph.d. city university of new york, york college epa, 2006

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