Wealth and Psychological Benefit of Donation in Japan: Before and after the Great East Japan Earthquake

Abstract

Recent research suggests that happiness enhanced by donation experience, which is called the “psychological benefit of donation” in this paper, promotes the next donation. Given that donation is a form of redistribution, rich people are expected to donate more than poor people. Therefore, rich people are expected to receive more psychological benefit than poor people from this experience. Contrary to this expectation, considering the mechanism of the psychological benefit of donation and the survey data obtained on donation in Japan, it was suggested that rich people actually receive less psychological benefit of donation than poor people. Moreover, given the changes of values and circumstances before and after the Great East Japan Earthquake, it might be possible that the relationship between wealth and the psychological benefit of donation ceased after the Earthquake. To test these predictions, the relationship between wealth and the psychological benefit of donation in Japan before and after the Great East Japan Earthquake was investigated. The results show that while donation experience enhanced happiness only among poor people before the Earthquake, it enhanced happiness among both rich and poor people after the Earthquake. Future implications and limitations of this research are then discussed.