1 William 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

2 William Ashton, Ph.D. City University of New York, York College EPA, 2006 What Happened 7:59 a.m. local time on December 26, 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.

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

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

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

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

7 William Ashton, Ph.D. City University of New York, York College EPA, 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?

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

9 William Ashton, Ph.D. City University of New York, York College EPA, 2006 Social Impact Theory – SIT Social Impact is a function of: Strength (status) Immediacy, and Number of sources

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

11 William Ashton, Ph.D. City University of New York, York College EPA, 2006 Data Donations – Reuters report as of January 6, 2005 Dead – Associated Press estimates as of January 1, Distance – Miles from Banda Aceh to capital city of country

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

13 William Ashton, Ph.D. City University of New York, York College EPA, 2006 Analysis Plan 1.MRC on All Countries – Test Elements of SIT a. analysis of regression 2.MRC – U.S. Removed – Test of U.S. Stinginess a.Using SIT elements i.MRC ii.prediction and confidence interval b.Using only significant predictors i.MRC ii.prediction and confidence interval

14 William Ashton, Ph.D. City University of New York, York College EPA, 2006 Descriptives VariableMeanStd. DeviationN GDP1.2207E+12 (1.2 Trillion Dollars) E+1227 Distance Private Giving (Million Dollars) Government Giving (Million Dollars) Dead

15 William Ashton, Ph.D. City University of New York, York College EPA, 2006 Correlations Gov’t Give Private Give GDPDistanceDead Gov’t Give (should be negative).544** Private Give.999**.847** (should be negative).501 GDP Distance.152 *p<.05; ** p<.01, ***p<.0001

16 William Ashton, Ph.D. City University of New York, York College EPA, 2006 GDP, Dead & Distance on Government Giving GDP entered first; Dead & Distance entered second Model 1 (GDP), R^2=.128, p>.05 Model 2 (GDP & Dead) VariableBSE Bβ Constant GDP1.906E Distance-1.21E (GPD & Dead are acting as suppressors) Dead * *p<.05; ** p<.01, ***p<.0001 Model R^2=.3418, p<.05; Δ R^2=.213, p<.05

17 William Ashton, Ph.D. City University of New York, York College EPA, 2006 GDP, Distance & Dead on Private Giving GDP entered first; Distance & Dead entered second Model 1 (GDP), R^2=.998, p<.0001 Model 2 (GDP, Distance & Dead) VariableBSE Bβ Constant GDP9.009E *** Distance1.824E Dead *p<.05; ** p<.01, ***p<.0001 Model R^2=.998, p.05

18 William Ashton, Ph.D. City University of New York, York College EPA, 2006 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 SIT Private Giving GDP is significantly related to Private Giving No Support for SIT

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

20 William Ashton, Ph.D. City University of New York, York College EPA, 2006 GDP, Dead & Distance on Government Giving GDP entered first; Distance & Dead entered second Model 1 (GDP), R^2=.098, p>.05 Model 2 (GDP & Dead) VariableBSE Bβ Constant GDP3.025E Distance-6.83E (zero order is neg) Dead * *p<.05; ** p<.01, ***p<.0001 Model R^2=.315, p<.05; Δ R^2=.217, p<.05

21 William Ashton, Ph.D. City University of New York, York College EPA, 2006 y-hat = GDP * 3.025E-11 + Distance * 6.83E-03 + Dead * U.S. Dead = 36; Distance = 9340; GDP = 1.1E+13 y=hat U.S. = E+13 * 3.025E * 6.83E * y-hat U.S. = 661 million dollars SE-Y-hat= ; n=26 95% Confidence Interval of +/ / ~= 222 to 900 Million Actual Government Giving = 350 Million U.S. was not stingy – giving was within the confidence interval.

22 William Ashton, Ph.D. City University of New York, York College EPA, 2006 GDP, Dead & Distance on Private Giving GDP entered first; Distance & Dead entered second Model 1 (GDP), R^2=.951, p<.0001 Model 2 (GDP & Dead) VariableBSE Bβ Constant GDP4.710E * Distance-8.63E ‡ Dead *p<.05; ** p<.01, ***p<.0001 Model R^2=.982, p<.0001; Δ R^2=.031, p<.05

23 William Ashton, Ph.D. City University of New York, York College EPA, 2006 y-hat = GDP * 4.710E-11 + Distance * -8.63E-04 + Dead * y-hat U.S. = 680 Million Dollars SE-y-hat = ; n=10 95% Confidence Interval = +/ / ~= 526 to 834 Actual Private Giving = 1,000 Million Private U.S. Citizens gave more than what would have been predicted.

24 William Ashton, Ph.D. City University of New York, York College EPA, 2006 For the MRC Purists … Repeat above analysis with: U.S. removed (as before) Only using significant predictors (new): Government Giving – Dead Private Giving - GDP

25 William Ashton, Ph.D. City University of New York, York College EPA, 2006 Dead on Government Giving R^2=.265, p<.01 Model (Dead) VariableBSE Bβ Constant Dead ** * p<.05; ** p<.01, ***p<.0001

26 William Ashton, Ph.D. City University of New York, York College EPA, 2006 y-hat = Dead * y-hat U.S. = Million Dollars SE-y-hat = ; n=26 95% Confidence Interval = +/ /-218 ~= 47 to 485 Actual Government Giving = 350 Million U.S. Government giving within confidence interval.

27 William Ashton, Ph.D. City University of New York, York College EPA, 2006 GDP on Private Giving R^2=.951, p<.0001 Model (GDP) VariableBSE Bβ Constant GDP8.996E *** * p<.05; ** p<.01, ***p<.0001

28 William Ashton, Ph.D. City University of New York, York College EPA, 2006 y-hat = GDP * 8.996E-11 y-hat U.S. = Million Dollars n=10 SE-y-hat = % Confidence Interval = +/ /- 155 ~= 830 to 1140 Actual Private Giving = 1,000 Million U.S. Citizens gave what would have been predicted.

29 William Ashton, Ph.D. City University of New York, York College EPA, 2006 Summary of Concurrent Predictions U.S. Source PrivateGovernment Predictors SITMore than Predicted As Predicted SignificantAs Predicted

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

31 William Ashton, Ph.D. City University of New York, York College EPA, 2006 To download this slideshow, please go to: