Bibliometric Applications in Social Science Research: The Social Network Context of Generosity

Abstract

Whether or not a person chooses to act philanthropically can seem like a personal decision. Yet, giving is inherently a social act, minimally involving a giver and a receiver. The relational aspects of giving decisions can be studied by investigating social networks. What is known about the role of social networks in charitable giving? To answer this question, this study utilizes bibliometric techniques to review existing literature in a systematic manner. Applying these tools to social science research facilitates integration of knowledge across multiple disciplines and diverse methodological approaches. Across the reviewed research, there are five central themes. First, networks can shape values of efforts to support the public good. Second, networks can informally punish people for acting too self-interestedly. Third, networks can join together or exclude, contributing to social inequality and its reproduction over time. Fourth, networks can maintain group dynamics. Fifth, networks can pattern behaviors into habits, form interdependence, situate what is considered normal, and provide stability in times of crisis. Implications of existing research are drawn toward understanding young adulthood within its networked social contexts of generosity.

1. Introduction

This study engages the tools of bibliometrics to implement a systematic search process and integrative analysis. These techniques are applied toward understanding a specific set of social science research topics. The chapter is framed within an understanding that scientific processes should also be systematic in their literature review searching. The same tools that inform replicability in the data collection process should also guide the process of learning from existing studies. While many existing literature reviews synthesize a set of studies that is constructed by individual authors in ways that can be opaque and challenging to replicate, this study presents a set of replicable practices for how to scope relevant literature and ensure that the entire body of existing studies on a topic is sourced. The result is an integrative review of existing research that evidences how bibliometric techniques can be utilized in practice. The synthesized findings are framed within their implications for practitioners who work in the field of philanthropy, as fundraisers, strategic planners, and social change agents. The practical tips garnered for nongovernmental, nonprofit, and civil society organizations are generated within sound research that is systematically scoped and theoretically integrated. Implications are drawn for understanding the charitable giving of young people with networked contexts. As a result, this chapter showcases how social science research can utilize bibliometrics to inform applied practices.

2. Topic background

This section provides background by explaining the topics of interest to a broad set of readers who may not be experts in these areas. This section also describes how the topics were framed toward deriving a set of systematic search processes in applied bibliometrics, which are described in the subsequent, third section on methodology.

Whether or not someone chooses to act generously can seem like a personal decision. Yet, giving is inherently a social act. Existing scholarship finds that individual decisions to act generously are embedded within social contexts. This study focuses on those social contexts. More specifically, identities, networks, and norms clearly impact the ways in which individuals choose to engage in charitable giving. These social contexts provide strong rationales for prosocial behaviors. How and why people engage in generous activities is contingent on their social identity characteristics, networks of relationships, and normative group guidelines.

The overarching research question that this study seeks answers to is: What is known about the role of social contexts in charitable giving? Answering this question requires an interdisciplinary synthesis that integrates knowledge across diverse disciplines, theoretical approaches, and empirical results. To begin, this background section delineates the following stepwise process: defining the search parameters which are then in turn applied in a systematic search. The first step is to address answers to this question: How is generosity defined and measured? (Section 2.1). Second, the next step is to address answers to the question: How are social contexts defined and measured? (Section 2.2). Informed by this background, the bibliometric analysis engages in a third step of bibliometric analysis (Section 3), which in turn advances answers to the question: How do social contexts impact generous activities? (Section 4). This is followed by a discussion and implications for understanding young adulthood within its social contexts of generosity (Section 5).

2.1 Generous actions

First, bibliometric techniques are engaged to systematically scope the topic of generosity [1]. Specifically, “Generosity is giving good things to others freely and abundantly. Generous behaviors are intended to enhance the wellbeing of others. Generosity can be actualized through various forms of giving: ‘Giving comes in different forms. It’s not always in money’” [1, 2, 3, 4]. This understanding of generosity as the actions of everyday people is not entirely overlapping with philanthropy, which is understood as more formal, sectoral, and organizationally embodied activities. With this definitional context, the following analysis brackets as outside the purview of its scope the sector of organizations and the professionals who are required by employment to maintain philanthropic activities. Those domains are important and worthy of study. Instead, this analysis focuses on everyday generosity, the interpersonal dynamics of giving, and how people engage with social institutions to affect change intended to benefit others beyond the self. This theoretical background informs how the topic of generosity is scoped in the subsequent bibliometric analysis.

2.2 Social contexts

Second, bibliometric techniques are engaged to systematically scope for the social contexts in which generosity occurs. People do not always act selfishly or in their best interest; nor are behaviors in every instance purposeful [5]. Combined, these postulates highlight that actions cannot be explained by personal preferences alone and underscore the importance of social interactions in shaping behavior [6]. While those are important avenues of study, this analysis focuses instead on the role of social relationships. Specifically, attention to three social contexts: identities, networks, and norms. Identities are briefly defined as social demographic characteristics that can shape constructions of the self. Networks are briefly defined as relationships embedded within groups and organizations. Norms are briefly defined as group dynamics that affect individual actions through perceptions of what groups deem to be valuable, important, desirable, unworthy, or futile. The following sections review each of these three social contexts in further depth. This theoretical background informs how the social contexts of generosity are scoped in the subsequent bibliometric analysis.

2.2.1 Identities

Social identities include gender, marital status, race, ethnicity, age, religiosity,¹ and socioeconomic status. This study focuses particularly on three social statuses most associated with marginalization: (1) gender, (2) race and ethnicity, and (3) socioeconomic status. First, gender differences are rooted in historical discrimination embedded within modern social institutions [8]. Yet, while the de-gendering of access has generally resulted in more women within education and labor force participation, women remain highly concentrated in unpaid and underpaid work. In summary, personal identities and expressions of self are often gendered.

Second, racial and ethnic differences are rooted in historical discriminations that are also ongoing in contemporary social systems. For example, generalized distrust (misanthropy) is higher for racial and ethnic minorities: such that in the U.S. whites are on average more than twice as likely to trust others [9]. The implication is that generalized social trust measures are most likely to tap into trustworthiness of whites, who compose the statistical majority in the U.S. Particular and strategic trust focus on expectations within more circumcised groups and is based on more interpersonal experiences. In summary, personal identity and expressions of trust are often raced.

Third, socioeconomic status or social class differences also structure identity relationships. The most common measures of socioeconomic status (SES) are income and educational attainment. Concern for the general welfare of others is higher for people with greater levels of educational attainment, yet benevolence and universalism are higher among those who have lower income levels [10]. Additionally, social class identities often matter most in their intersection with other identities, referred to as intersectionality [11].

2.2.2 Networks

Social inquiry has long attended to relationships as central to explaining action and change [12]. The majority of this scholarship focused on analyzing how different network structures explain outcomes. There are two sets of approaches within overarching theories about social networks: formalism and relationalism. Formalism studies the structural configurations and patterns of network ties, such as bridging nodes (people who connect one network to another) and structural holes (gaps where no ties exist). Relationalism views those approaches as static and fixed, and instead focuses on dynamic features of relationships and what relational qualities fuel or break interconnections. Both approaches share a view of networks as an important social conduit (channeling energy, information, and motivation between people) or blockage (responsible for gaps in information flow, hoarding of resources among a small group of people, and in other ways contributing to and perpetuating inequalities).

Scholars have also studied networks for their power in explaining cultural and organizational dynamics as mechanisms for shared values, meanings, repertoires [13]. These approaches include focusing on the roles of tastes, preferences, and storytelling in creating and sustaining relational ties. A cultural approach to networks focuses on the meaning-making processes embedded in relational ties and prioritizes the role of individual and organizational agency in forming and dissolving network affiliations. Networks are both an outcome and mechanism of human cognition [14]. Social networks are crucial architectures that influence perception, storage, memory, retrieval, and interpretation of information. In turn, affiliations contribute to cognitive processes that can result in homophily (seeking likeness or sameness in relational ties), stereotyping, and other in-group and out-group behaviors.

In summary, social networks influence and are influenced by dynamics occurring within the human brain, small groups and organizations, and institutional processes of economic and political systems. Networks are often a root explanation for social actions [15]. Relational mechanisms explain how network ties pattern flows of information, trust, and other resource sharing. For example, dynamics of reciprocity include one person deeming the other to be a friend and that second person deeming the first to be a friend in return. Alternatively, unreciprocated friendship leads to the dissolution of ties. Additionally, network closure refers to the finding that mutually connected people (friends of friends knowing each other) builds stability in the persistence of ties over time. Moreover, centrality within a network has important implications for access to resources, and isolation for exclusion. In reference to altruism and other prosocial activities, networks are a central mechanism for explaining group cooperation [16]. Repeated interactions among people strengthen social bonds and facilitate trust in believing relational investments will be reciprocated.

2.2.3 Norms

Social norms are general expectations for the ways that people act within groups [17].² These regulations communicate assumptions about what behaviors are acceptable in specific situations and among group members [19, 20]. Norms are “group-level evaluations of behavior” that are “fundamental to social life,” can “maintain social order, discouraging antisocial behavior and acting as ‘soft guardrails’ necessary for democracy,” and which “catalyze positive social change, discouraging harmful behaviors such as violence and encouraging constructive behaviors such as those that improve health. Yet, norms can also cause destructive behavior, maintain inequalities, and exacerbate social conflict” [21].

Norms are a group-level dynamic.³ Norms are not laws that are enforced by nation-states, nor policies enforced by organizations. Norms are instead less formalized ‘unwritten rules’ of behavior that govern acceptance within groups [21]. Participation in groups forms expectations of what is considered normal [24]. Norm studies include a focus on three primary aspects: rules, reputations, and relations. Rules are most clearly evident when violated, and participants in a group let others know the expectations by rewarding desired behavior or punishing undesirable behavior. Formal sanctions include punishment, such as imprisonment. Informal sanctions can be subtle and include nonverbals, such as eye-rolling. Similarly, formal rewards can include plaques, and informal rewards can be high-fives. Reputations are the collection of expectations accrued in groups over time [24]. A person can have the reputation of repeatedly being kind, or a person can have a reputation of recurrently being irresponsible. Relations are the channels through which norms are formed, communicated, and altered.

Here is a summary of seven norms that are relevant to generosity. Norm of Giving: People should give for no other reason than the value of giving [25]. Norm of Social Responsibility: People should support reliant others [26]. Norm of Reciprocity: People should reciprocate favors, affection, goods, services [27]. Norm of Indebtedness: People should be obligated to repay for received benefit [28]. Norm of Social Comparison: people should want to be similar in abilities, traits, attitudes, praise, inclusiveness, likability to others within salient reference groups [29]. Norm of Conformity: People should yearn for status (prestige, esteem, popularity, acceptance) and conform to standards from higher-status people, groups [30, 31]. Norm of Distribution: People should distribute help, not concentrate it [32]. This theoretical background informs how the topic of social norms is scoped in the subsequent bibliometric analysis.

3. Methodology

This is an application of bibliometrics to the social scientific investigation of generosity within three social contexts: identities, networks, and norms. There were two phases to implementing a bibliometric process. The first phase was a discovery process that informed an initial sample that was purposefully, rather than systematically constructed. This phase was informed by expert knowledge on the social science topics. The goal of the initial phase of the project was to explicate what is often otherwise implicit in the literature review process. The initial sample then informed the second phase, which was a systematic sample utilizing bibliometric techniques.

3.1 Initial sample

This study builds upon an initial purposeful sample to specify a systematic sampling frame. The purposeful sample spanned 70 years and more than 100 existing articles, books, chapters. The range of topics, approaches, theories, and sources provided the basis for the subsequent systematic approach, which utilizes bibliometric techniques to sample publications. Initially, the systematic sample consisted of five disciplinary journals in economics, sociology, and the social sciences that were parsed articles for with relevant topics: Social Science Research (SSR); American Journal of Sociology (AJS); American Sociological Review (ASR); The Sociological Quarterly (TSQ); American Economic Review (AER). Figure 1 visualizes the process from initial to systematic sample.

Figure 1.

Search process from discovery phase initial sample to systematic phase parsed sample.

Initial keywords used to locate articles relevant to (A) generosity included: (1) charitable giving (monetary donations, donors); (2) volunteering (time volunteers); (3) political action (voting, activism, protesting); (4) blood donations; (5) organ donations; (6) estate donations (willed giving, such as property upon death); (7) lending possessions (not bank loans/borrowing, rather a neighbor sharing property); (8) sustainability/environmental giving (such as spending money on fair trade coffee); (9) relational/informal helping (such as sitting a neighbor’s kids for free while working); (10) community/civic engagement (composite measures of #1–9). For (B) social contexts, the initial keywords were: (1) identities (gender, race/ethnicity, social class/ses); (2) networks; (3) norms (such as norms of reciprocity, fairness, sharing).

Articles were sampled if they included both (A) generosity and (B) social contexts. The sample does not include articles on only A or B or that: (1) focus on macro-level explanations or outcomes (such as effects of tax incentive policy, cross-national comparisons of welfare states, characteristics of the political or economic institution alone); or (2) focus on formal meso-level explanations (such as actions taken by employed organizational actors: nonprofit management). In summary, articles were sampled if their approach: (1) focuses on individual-level outcomes (such as donor donating) and (2) focuses on informal meso-level explanations for charitable giving (specifically identities, networks, norms).

With these search parameters, and after thoroughly parsing for relevance, the initial results for five journals returned 84 articles: American Journal of Sociology 12; American Sociological Review 10; The Sociological Quarterly 25; American Economic Review 8; Social Science Research 29. At an average of about 17 articles per journal, for the 22 intended journals, this approach was expected to return approximately 374 articles, which was too large to reasonably read and synthesize in a single paper.

3.2 Systematic sample

To create a sample that could reasonably be synthesized, the search was refined to narrow the scope to recent studies published since 2010 and to focus only on charitable giving and composite scores of community and civic engagement that include giving. This included narrowing the keyword scope to: generosity; charitable giving; donation; religious giving; donors (parsed for monetary donation). For example, initial hits for these keywords returns 238 potential articles within the American Journal of Sociology (some of which overlap/duplicate hits across keywords); a smaller subset of articles are sampled for (a) charitable giving and (b) at least one of the social contexts.

The result is 22 selected journals. Of these 18 are specific to disciplines and scoped for topic relevance, and four are topic-relevant interdisciplinary journals. The 18 disciplinary journals included for social sciences: Social Science Research, Journal of Marriage and Family; for sociology: American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Annual Review of Sociology, Social Forces, The Sociological Quarterly; for economics: American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization; for political science: American Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Review, Annual Review of Political Science, Political Psychology; and for social Psychology: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Review, Social Psychology Quarterly. The four topic-relevant interdisciplinary journals were: Nonprofit & Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Nonprofit Management & Leadership, Voluntary Sector Review, Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations.

The refined search parameters resulted in 22 sourced journals with initial hits of potentially related articles totaling to 3548 articles, out of which parsing returned 104 articles that were sampled as relevant for this analysis. Figure 2 presents a word cloud visualizing the disciplinary distribution: economics 37, interdisciplinary topic 25, social sciences 18, sociology 16, political science 6, social psychology 2. This represents counts on articles that attend to both topic sets, not either in isolation. For example, social psychology studies on norms without a focus on charitable giving are not included.

Figure 2.

Discipline counts for systematic sample of publications.

Table 1 displays 91 articles studied charitable giving, with 66 within disciplinary journals and 25 within topical journals. Additionally, 13 articles studied composite indexes that included charitable giving within a larger construct; all of these articles were within disciplinary journals.

Generosity topic	Total	Disciplinary	Interdisciplinary
Charitable Giving	91	66	25
Community/Civic Engagement	13	13	0

Table 1.

Bibliometric data for generosity topic and source type.

In terms of the social contexts, 38 articles studied how race, class, and gender identities relate to charitable giving, with 22 articles in disciplinary journals and 16 in topical interdisciplinary journals (Table 2; Figure 3). Distinctly, of the total of 33 articles each that studied networks or norms in relation to charitable giving, only five of the network articles and four of the articles on norms were in topical interdisciplinary journals, whereas the majority (86%) on these topics were found within disciplinary journals. One implication of this finding is that scholars who attend only to topical journals would be more likely to find content on identities and could (erroneously) conclude that little extant scholarship attends to networks and norms in giving.

Social context topic	Total	Disciplinary	Interdisciplinary
Identities (Race, Class, Gender)	38	22	16
Networks	33	28	5
Norms	33	29	4

Table 2.

Bibliometric data for social context topic and source type.

Figure 3.

Bibliometric data for publication topic and source type.

The following section presents the results of the systematic search and integrative analysis on the particular topic of social networks and charitable giving. The findings of charitable giving in the other two social contexts (identities and norms), are not the focus of this chapter and are thus only briefly summarized.

4. Results

Networks are an important social context in which individual decision-making occurs, and this section attends to links between social networks and charitable giving. Social networks can serve as conduits through which people exchange information and resources, and networks are how altruism becomes more broadly generalized to include giving to unknown others, or strangers [16]. Within this systematic search of journal articles, 33 studies attended to social networks and giving (e.g., see [33]). A shared theme in these studies is the notion that charitable giving is contingent on cooperation within ties of linked individuals. Group ties extend the boundaries of solidarity beyond immediate family to include wider circles of outreach. These empirical analyses are grouped within three categories based on the primary implications of their findings for practice: recruitment, retention, and participation.

4.1 Recruitment

Twelve studies attend to the power of network recruitment, of which seven pinpointed the role of asking. For instance, Beyerlein and Bergstrand [34] found that network ties increased the likelihood that people were recruited to engage in generous activities. Relatedly, Andreoni and colleagues found that asking others to give as a powerful motivator for generosity because direct communication between a solicitor and potential donor augments empathy for the altruistic purposes invited by the asker [35]. Indeed, verbal requests for donations increase the rate of givers by more than half and raise the total amount given by nearly three-quarters [36].

Moreover, asking at one point in time and following up later to collect donations also appears to be effective, likely due to separating the moment of the network influence on decision-making from the actual behavior moment [37]. Conversely, Exley and Petrie [38] found that expecting forthcoming asks afforded potential donors the opportunity to decline to give. This seeming contradiction in findings may be related to network positions, that is: how close or socially distant one is from an acquaintance. Specifically, the closest friend appears to have the greatest network strength, such that the majority of network effect found in previous studies appears to be due to the giving activities of a person’s best friend [39]. Plus, observing peer giving as another key network mechanism [40], and the odds of being a donor are 1.5 greater when close friends donate [39].

In terms of practical tips related to recruitment, fundraising through online social networks was effective when donors were incentivized to post a notice to their friends that they had donated, and donors were more likely to do this when the ‘nuisance cost’ was low, such as when they were already logged in to the platform in which asked to post [41]. Additionally, the ordering of solicitation calls matters. Meer and Rosen [42] found that volunteers who call to recruit alumni donors to give would often proceed through an alphabetized list in order of donor names. Since solicitors would often run out of time to call every person on the list, donors at the beginning of the alphabet received more calls than those later in the list and thus ultimately were more likely to be donors than end-of-alphabet alumni.

In addition to asks alone, several additional recruitment techniques were identified. Namely, reminders were found to be a helpful donor recruitment tool [43]. However, it is worth noting that reminders increased both the rate of donation and the un-subscription rate from the mailing list. This research implies that there is an ‘annoyance cost’ associated with too-frequent reminders, and that it is important to strike the right balance. A second tip is that suggesting a specific donation amount can result in a 50 percent increase in giving [44]. Third, there is inconclusive evidence that charity auctions are more effective than regular charitable giving donation mechanisms [45], which implies asks may be a cost efficient and comparably effective strategy.

4.2 Retention

Another six articles attended to retention. Donors can be viewed as relational partners with recipient organizations, in this regard there can be donor-organization network effects. For example, donors were more likely to be retained when they had previous experience with an organization that was positive, thought the organization had a trustworthy reputation, and felt personal affinity with the organization’s cause [46]. Similarly, beyond professional capacities, donors were more likely to give to organizations that were already part of their existing network ties [47]. Specifically, more than three-quarters of donors in one year repeat their donations the following year [48].

Yet, not all network dynamics are positive, insofar as people can also rely upon existing ties to know their generous intentions and thus feel less compelled to have to enact their goodwill. For example, Knowles and Servatka [49] found that participants in a laboratory experiment were more likely to procrastinate on giving when afforded a longer deadline, which comports with theoretical expectations that people prefer to put off non-immediate tasks.

A practical tip for retaining donors and overcoming procrastination tendencies is to provide token gifts. For example, in a natural field experiment, donors who received gifts were more loyal to the organization [50]. In a laboratory experiment, participants were more likely to share resources with a group partner who gave them gifts [51].

4.3 Participation

A total of fourteen articles investigated participation aspects of network affiliations. As revealed in the studies on identities above, Tian and Konrath [52] found that affinity matters in donor decisions, with five types of effects within network pairs: (1) the number of shared identities; (2) the type of shared identities; (3) the salience of shared identities; (4) the social expectations of key identities; and (5) the degree of overlap between self and others in terms of shared identities. Yet, the size of social groups matters. For example, the donation rate is higher among large groups, but the amount of donations from each person is lower [53]. Moreover, groups with a high density of network ties among them have greater trust of strangers, but that generalized trust does not appear to spillover to other prosocial orientations and actions [54].

The kind of social group matters too. For example, donations based on political affiliation appear to have more of a ‘tit-for-tat’ expectation, in terms of strings attached for policymaker actions [55, 56], whereas donations based on sports affinity appear to be given more generally to support athletes and sports groups without reciprocity [57, 58]. Nevertheless, a ‘pay-it- forward’ mentality appears to undergird alumni giving, insofar as alumni were more likely to donate to their alma mater when they had received scholarship or other financial assistance as a student [59]. Peer pressure is also an effective alumni mechanism [60].

By far the social group with the greatest links between participation and charitable giving was within religious organizations. For example, people involved in religious congregation small groups were significantly more engaged in civic activities [61], and people with a greater sense of religious meaning gave more to religious causes [62]. Moreover, there appears to be a ‘symbiosis effect’, rather than substitution, referring to evidence that religiously engaged people were not solely giving to religious causes but also more likely than non-religious peers to donate to non-religious causes [63]. These religious participation effects appear to operate through both cognitive and emotional processes [64], and religious social networks seem to provide strong recruitment channels for donating to and volunteering for charitable causes [65].

In summary, there are five central themes in response to the research question: What is known about the role of social networks in charitable giving? First, networks can shape values of working toward the public good. Second, networks can punish people for acting too self-interestedly. Third, networks can join together or exclude, contributing to social inequality. Fourth, networks can maintain group dynamics, such as men giving more to religious groups. Fifth, networks can pattern behaviors into habits, form interdependence, situate what is considered normal, and provide stability in times of crisis. Additionally, key mechanisms identified within social networks include communication, rewards, sanctions, generalized exchange, and reciprocity. On this last point, it seems that one of the crucial ways that network dynamics emerge is through their structuring of repeated interactions, which can in turn support or inhibit other-regarding preferences such as solidarity and altruism [16].

5. Discussion

5.1 Engaging young people

Existing studies evidence the influence of social networks on shaping charitable giving behaviors, and this section outlines implications for understanding young people within their social contexts. In terms of engagement, network aspects highlight the significance of whether and how the ties between solicitor and donor are established by the practice of asking. Simply starting from connecting a previously disconnected tie with donors will increase the probability of giving behaviors. This is important for fostering increased giving over the course of development from youth into young adulthood. Further, donor ties have the potential to promote generosity once these network connections are activated. When asks come from donor close ties, or when the giving behavior is exposed to donor peers, the likelihood of charitable giving is enhanced. In addition, the frequency and sequence of the tie connections also matter in generating a positive impact on charitable giving. For young people, who are on average more embedded in social media, online network ties are key for fostering giving.

These findings shed light on practices which are central for philanthropic practitioners. Reminders were found to be a helpful donor recruitment tool. However, it is worth noting that reminders increased both the rate of donation and the un-subscription rate from the mailing list. This research implies that there is an ‘annoyance cost’ associated with too-frequent reminders, and that it is important to strike the right balance. Practitioners can include this information into their strategic planning and decision-making processes in order to manage their relationships more effectively with existing and potential donors.

In recruitment-related studies, the network has been studied from both a cultural and structural approach. From the cultural perspective, individuals’ agency in making the decision has been mostly studied in terms of whether or not committing to the giving behaviors. From the structural perspective, network positions have been centrally studied through examining the influence of direct connected ties on donors’ giving decisions. Future research could extend the scholarship by examining the influence of other network positions, such as indirect connected ties, on charitable giving behavior.

5.2 Retaining young people

Regarding retaining young people, networks explain the relationship dynamics between donors and recipient organizations. Repeated giving behaviors are more likely to occur within existing networks, particularly between trustworthy ties and gift-encouraged connections. This implies that young people who are not already embedded within giving networks will be less likely to be retained over time.

On the other hand, network configurations also play a role in shaping the generous habits of donors. Close ties may be able to engender charitable giving behavior, but being embedded in closely connected networks may also inhibit donor ability to find gaps in need of attention. When giving ties are strong, people procrastinate on giving. Perhaps their long relationship history maintains their reputation and inhibits a need to give to demonstrate their generosity among friends. In this context, there may be opportunities to retain young people by strategies that focus on showing friends the fruits of a generous spirit, or in other ways building giving into network development.

In the retention sample, the network effect in charitable giving has been mainly examined from the relational perspective with a focus on the flow of trust and gift incentives, as well as their influence on donors’ repeated behaviors. Future studies could expand this line of research by examining repeated charitable giving behaviors by studying the assortative and proximal perspectives of young people. This could develop a comparative understanding of flow pattern of trust and gift incentives in dynamic relationships being built throughout the transition from youth into adulthood, to further understand the determinants of donor retention in the context of networked giving.

5.3 Linking young people

In terms of participation, the network aspect has been primarily examined through the ties between donors and their affiliations, from the perspective of shared identities between donors, the size, the density, and the type of affiliated groups. Future research needs to examine the role that these factors have in lining young people in giving. Specifically, these findings highlight three network factors that affect donor decisions: size, density, and affinity type. First, large groups give more on average, but the giving rate of each person is less. Second, a high density of network ties appears to foster greater trust, but not more giving. More research needs to be done to understand the role that group size and density has in young adulthood.

Third, certain affinity types expect more reciprocity from the giving behavior than other groups. For example, alumni give more to universities from which they received a scholarship, and political givers appear to expect an exchange in policymaker actions. On the other hand, sports givers appear not to expect direct reciprocity when giving to support athletics, and religious givers donate beyond religious causes only to more general causes. These findings about reciprocity expectations can help to contextualize ways that different affinity types can link young people into the cause.

6. Conclusion

In conclusion, this study contributes to an understanding of social networks and charitable giving. By providing an integrative synthesis, results of existing studies are reviewed within the nonprofit and philanthropy activites of: recruitment, retention, and participation. The application of bibliometric techniques to analyzing social science research evidences their utility in extracting information from a diverse set of disciplines, theories, and methods to form a wholistic picture of what is known on these topics. Additionally, it highlights pertinent evidence and draws implications for practice particularly focused on engaging, retaining, and linking with young people.

6.1 Limitations and future studies

Nevertheless, this study also has limitations. First, the bibliometric approach includes possible selection biases based upon studies using ambiguous terms to describe networks and charitable giving, which may cause the keyword sampling to miss relevant articles. Second, to set the parameters at feasible boundaries for humans to cognitively process, the analysis focuses on charitable giving behaviors, delimiting other prosocial behaviors such as volunteering or organ donation for future studies. There is empirical evidence indicating that determinants or contagion mechanisms are not always the same across different prosocial behaviors, such as monetary giving and volunteering. Thus, the result of this research needs to be understood within the context of the activity studied: charitable giving. Future studies need to employ similar methods to seek generalizing to other forms of generosity. Third, the network aspects that are the focus of this study are closely related to, and can intersect with, the other social contexts: identities and norms. For example, norms are essential in influencing the group dynamics of networks, and identity is one of the significant predictors for tie connections and network structures. However, within the bounds of this single paper, it was only feasible to present the network analysis. Future papers from this project will present bibliometric analysis of identities and norms.

6.2 Knowledge gaps

This integrative analysis based upon a systematic search of ten years of contemporary empirical studies reveals two primary knowledge gaps in understanding the social contexts of giving. One, the relational dynamics embedded within network structures are important for understanding giving. Yet, identities are studied more often than are networks and norms in relation to charitable giving. Networks and norms need to be afforded greater attention, especially within studies published in interdisciplinary outlets. Particularly of interest are studies that focus on how these network and norm processes operate during the dynamic phases of development from youth into young adulthood. There is some attention to field experiments and how they shape group dynamics in childhood, and there is a focus on the natural contexts of peers in youth. A knowledge gap exists in how developing networks matter for giving in young adulthood.

Two, practitioners and researchers would be aided by more synthesis across topics, disciplines, theories, and approaches, especially with application interpretations. Even within sets of literatures relevant for practitioners, the applications for practice are often minimal and not necessarily identified in relation to specific giving activities. To rectify this, future studies can replicate the approach of this bibliometric analysis to advance integrative understanding about what is known about the other sets of generous activities, such as volunteering and political action. Also pertinent would be integrations across identities and norms. Importantly, each of these topics needs to be reviewed within the context of what is known about youth and young adulthood.

Acknowledgments

This study was conducted with financial support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Investment ID OPP1203825, in support of the GenerosityForLife website. The authors wish to thank participants of the 50th Annual Conference of the Association for Research on Nonprofit and Voluntary Action, November 18-20, 2021, as well as research consultant Amy Thayer and graduate students Yu Wang and Christina Eggenberger for contributions to early stages of this project. Additionally, the authors are grateful for an award from the Indiana University Emergency Equity Fund for Research, which supported the graduate assistance of Yu Wang on this project; and to Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis University Library Open Access fund.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.