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International Review on Public and Nonprofit Marketing

28-07-2023 | Original Article

Fatalism and donation intention: who is more in control of their own life?

Author: Muhammed Bilgehan Aytaç

Published in: International Review on Public and Nonprofit Marketing

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Abstract

To date, consumer psychology literature has ignored the role of fatalistic beliefs in donation intention. Two subsequent quantitative survey studies (Ns = 289; 350) address this issue by investigating consumers’ fatalistic beliefs together with internal beliefs, empathy, and donation intention. In the first study, the new Fatalistic Story Scale is developed to measure how people evaluate others’ fate vs. self-fate through hypothetical life events. The second study analyzed people’s fatalistic beliefs’ relationship with donation intention and empathy. Findings of the first study suggested that people approach others’ lives more fatalistically than their own life. Considering this insight together with certain negative effects of fatalistic beliefs on beneficial and positive behaviors that have proven by studies from various disciplines, fatalism is expected to be negatively related to empathy and donation intention. Conversely, second study’s findings suggested that fatalism positively predicts empathy and donation intention. This contradiction and other findings are discussed together with implications.

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Appendix
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Footnotes
1
Giving by individuals in the USA almost consists of 70% of total giving (Giving USA Foundation, 2020).
 
2
While the definition of luck in the Cambridge Dictionary emphasizes positive outcomes (the force that causes things, especially good things, to happen to you by chance and not as a result of your own efforts or abilities), the definition of fate (what happens to a particular person or thing, especially something final or negative, such as death or defeat) emphasizes negative outcomes and even death. I predict that this is because fate is perceived as more unchangeable such that one cannot prevent bad things if they are predetermined. On the other hand, luck or chance evokes more positive feelings which actually imply one can change the outcome if lucky when taking the action (Cambridge University Press, n.d.).
 
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Metadata
Title
Fatalism and donation intention: who is more in control of their own life?
Author
Muhammed Bilgehan Aytaç
Publication date
28-07-2023
Publisher
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Published in
International Review on Public and Nonprofit Marketing
Print ISSN: 1865-1984
Electronic ISSN: 1865-1992
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12208-023-00383-5