Association of loneliness and perceived social exclusion with donation behavior among community-dwelling individuals aged 40 and over: longitudinal evidence from the nationally representative German Ageing Survey

Abstract

Background: There is limited knowledge regarding the association of loneliness or social exclusion with donation behavior. Aims: Our aim was to investigate the association of loneliness and perceived social exclusion with donation behavior based on a longitudinal approach. Methods: Longitudinal data were taken from wave 5 (year 2014) to wave 8 (year 2023) of the German Ageing Survey encompassing community-dwelling individuals aged 40 years and over. Established tools were used to quantify loneliness and perceived social exclusion. The willingness to donate and the total amount (in euros) of all donations (in the last 12 months) served as outcome measures. Fixed effects (FE) regressions with cluster-robust standard errors were used. Results: FE regressions showed that increases in loneliness were significantly associated with lower odds of donation after adjusting for socioeconomic factors, but became insignificant when accounting for lifestyle and health-related covariates. Conversely, a significant association was found between increases in perceived social exclusion and lower odds of donation across all models. However, neither changes in loneliness nor perceived social exclusion were significantly associated with changes in log amount of donations. Sociodemographic factors (i.e., age, sex, and education) did not moderate the identified associations. Discussion: Even after adjusting for a wide array of covariates, our longitudinal study showed a significant and robust association between increases in social exclusion and lower odds of donation. Conclusions: Avoiding increases in perceived social exclusion could encourage the decision to donate, an important prosocial behavior, pending further longitudinal evidence. Cross-country comparisons are recommended.