René Bekkers
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 256570 |
|---|---|
| NOME | René Bekkers |
| PRENOMES | René |
| SOBRENOME | Bekkers |
| ASSINATURA | BEKKERS R |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4403-7222 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 34 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 384 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 34 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2003 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 8 |
Learning to give
Prosocial behaviours are more commonly found among the higher educated. We examined to what extent genetic effects on prosocial behaviour captured by polygenic scores for educational attainment and cognitive performance can be detected. We apply a combination of an extended family approach using sibling fixed effects with polygenic scores to participants and their siblings in the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. These models better capture shared en…
Increasing knowledge about plasma and plasma donation through a serious game
Many European countries are facing plasma shortages, with lack of awareness and knowledge about plasma donation being a potential explanation for low donor numbers. One approach to increasing knowledge and awareness about plasma is through informal educational methods, such as serious games. We developed a serious game focused on plasma and plasma donation for children and adolescents (8–17 years) in the Netherlands and tested it with 636 partici…
Let us be Clear
Transparency means being honest and open about one’s practices. Transparency is considered a gold standard in the nonprofit sector and associated with a range of positive outcomes. We propose that transparency should also become a guiding principle and documented practice for nonprofit scholars. In this article, we articulate the context for discussing transparency in social science research and the potential risks of not being transparent. Ackno…
Computational Social Science for Nonprofit Studies
How can computational social science (CSS) methods be applied in nonprofit and philanthropic studies? This paper summarizes and explains a range of relevant CSS methods from a research design perspective and highlights key applications in our field. We define CSS as a set of computationally intensive empirical methods for data management , concept representation , data analysis , and visualization . What makes the computational methods “social” i…
Follow the crowd
Purposely guiding human decision making with a discrete suggestion, ‘nudging’, is increasingly popular. One particularly promising nudge is to provide decision makers with information about the decisions of others, also referred to as social information. Social information is often applied in fundraising campaigns to increase individual donations. A discrete suggestion such as the donation amount of others can result in donors donating similar am…
Time Use and Happiness of Millionaires
How do the very wealthy spend their time, and how does time use relate to well-being? In two studies in the Netherlands, the affluent ( N = 863; N = 690) and the general population ( N = 1,232; N = 306) spent time in surprisingly similar ways such as by spending the same amount of time working. Yet the nature of their time use differed in critical ways that are related to life satisfaction. In Study 1, millionaires spent more time engaged in acti…
Altruism in blood donation
In this paper, we use register data on all blood donors (n = 259,172) and changes in geographical locations of blood donation centers in the Netherlands over the past decade, to examine the strength of altruistic motivations in blood donation by testing how blood donor behavior changes after the cost of donating in the form of time and inconvenience increases. We examined whether closing donation centers influences blood donor lapse, and whether …
Can Charitable Donations Compensate for a Reduction in Government Funding? The Role of Information
Are private donors willing to replace cuts in government funding? The authors conducted a survey experiment (n = 2,458) to examine how information about government funding affected decisions to donate money to a large charitable organization in the Netherlands. Providing information about actual budget cuts increased the number of donors. Most new donors were recruited among respondents who had processed the information correctly, underlining the…
Blood Donation across the Life Course
This article examines how blood donation loyalty changes across the life course as a result of life events. Previous studies have shown that life events affect involvement in prosocial behavior, possibly as a result of loss of human and social capital. Using registry data from the blood collection agency in the Netherlands, linked to longitudinal survey data from the Donor InSight study (N = 20,560), we examined whether life events are related to…
De uiteenlopende effecten van overheidssubsidies aan goede doelen
Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community
The Foundations of Individuals’ Generalized Social Trust
This chapter reviews the literature on the causes of individuals’ generalized social trust (trust in unknown others) from a wide range of social science disciplines. The chapter structures the review around two broad classes of explanations: dispositional explanations (trust as a disposition) and experiential explanations (trust as a response to individual experiences). Both have been examined in a number of related lines of research, which are r…
Government Support and Charitable Donations
This page stores full documentation of the article "Government Support and Charitable Donations: A Meta-Analysis of the Crowding-out Hypothesis" which has been published as: De Wit, A., & Bekkers, R. (2017). Government Support and Charitable Donations: A Meta-Analysis of the Crowding-out Hypothesis. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 27(2), 301-319.
Foundations Supporting Research and Innovation in Europe
This article presents the most important results of the European Foundation for Research and Innovation Study, the first study to map the roles and collective contributions of Europe’s large, heterogeneous, and fragmented sector of research and innovation foundations. The study, based on a review of about 1,000 foundations, estimates that they contribute at least $6.4 billion a year to research and innovation in Europe. While this estimate shows …
Government Support and Charitable Donations
With the growing body of literature on governance styles in which nonprofit organizations are involved in creating and implementing public services, there is a need for robust evidence on the effects of public funding on nonprofit revenues. This paper systematically reviews previous studies on the crowding-out hypothesis, which holds that private charitable donations are lower in situations of higher government support and vice versa. We find tha…
Heterogeneity in Crowding-out
De Wit, A., Bekkers, R. and Broese van Groenou, M. (2016). Heterogeneity in Crowding-out: When Are Charitable Donations Responsive To Government Support? European Sociological Review. DOI: 10.1093/esr/jcw048
Altruism and Prosocial Behavior, Sociology of
Generalized Trust Through Civic Engagement? Evidence from Five National Panel Studies
According to a popular version of social capital theory, civic engagement should produce generalized trust among citizens. We put this theory to the test by examining the causal connection between civic engagement and generalized trust using multiple methods and multiple (prospective) panel datasets. We found participants to be more trusting. This was mostly likely caused by selection effects: the causal effects of civic engagement on trust were …
Examining the Association of Religious Context with Giving to Non-Profit Organizations
Why do citizens in religious groups and more religious countries give money to charitable causes? In this article we aim to theoretically and empirically unravel the influence of religious composition on giving to non-profit organizations across countries. Building on theories and research in sociology, social psychology, and economics we formulate hypotheses about individual- and contextual-level differences in engagement in religious and secula…
Who gives? A literature review of predictors of charitable giving. Part Two
This is the second of two articles in which we present a comprehensive review of the multidisciplinary academic literature on philanthropy. In this article, we identify the following predictors of charitable giving by individuals and/or households: gender, family composition and income. For each predictor, we discuss the evidence for the mechanisms that may explain why the predictor is correlated with giving. We conclude with a brief agenda for f…
Trust and Volunteering
Participation in voluntary associations is often believed to make citizens more trusting of others. This paper reports longitudinal analyses of a time intensive form of participation-volunteering-and generalized social trust using data from three waves of the Giving in the Netherlands Panel Study spanning 4 years (2002-2006; n = 692) refuting this belief. Trust is relatively stable over a 4 year period (0. 73). Changes in volunteering are not rel…
Explaining Differences in Philanthropic Behavior between Christians, Muslims, and Hindus in the Netherlands
Using survey data from the Netherlands, we find that Muslims have relatively high levels of religious philanthropic behavior and relatively low levels of secular philanthropic behavior, whereas Hindus have relatively low levels of religious philanthropic behavior and higher levels of secular philanthropic behavior. Results indicate that the community explanation and the conviction explanation of the relationship between religion and philanthropic…
A Literature Review of Empirical Studies of Philanthropy
The authors present an overview of the academic literature on charitable giving based on a literature review of more than 500 articles. They structure their review around the central question of why people donate money to charitable organizations. They identify eight mechanisms as the most important forces that drive charitable giving: (a) awareness of need; (b) solicitation; (c) costs and benefits; (d) altruism; (e) reputation; (f) psychological…
Who gives? A literature review of predictors of charitable giving Part One
This is the first of two papers in which we present a comprehensive review of the multidisciplinary academic literature on philanthropy, identifying the predictors of charitable giving by individuals and households. For each predictor, we discuss the evidence for the mechanisms that may explain why the predictor is correlated with giving. We conclude with a brief agenda for future research. In this first paper we present the evidence on the relat…
Voluntary Regulation of NGOs and Nonprofits
How can nonprofit organizations and NGOs demonstrate accountability to stakeholders and show that they are using funds appropriately and delivering on their promises? Many nonprofit stakeholders, including funders and regulators, have few opportunities to observe nonprofit internal management and policies. Such information deficits make it difficult for 'principals' to differentiate credible nonprofits from less credible ones. This volume examine…
And who is your neighbor?
We study differences in contributions of time and money to churches and non-religious nonprofit organizations between members of different religious denominations in the Netherlands. We hypothesize that contributions to religious organizations are based on involvement in the religious community, while contributions to non-religious organizations are more likely to be rooted in prosocial values such as altruism, equality, and responsibility for th…
Participation in Voluntary Associations
Participation in voluntary associations is explained by different theories in sociology, psychology, and political science. Sociologists have emphasized the effects of resources such as human and social capital. Psychologists have demonstrated the role of empathy and extraversion as aspects of personality. Political scientists have considered political values and attitudes. This paper investigates the predictive value of personality characteristi…
Generalized Trust Through Civic Engagement? Evidence from Five National Panel Studies
According to a popular version of social capital theory, civic engagement should produce generalized trust among citizens. We put this theory to the test by examining the causal connection between civic engagement and generalized trust using multiple methods and multiple (prospective) panel datasets. We found participants to be more trusting. This was mostly likely caused by selection effects: the causal effects of civic engagement on trust were …
Trust and Volunteering
Participation in voluntary associations is often believed to make citizens more trusting of others. This paper reports longitudinal analyses of a time intensive form of participation-volunteering-and generalized social trust using data from three waves of the Giving in the Netherlands Panel Study spanning 4 years (2002-2006; n = 692) refuting this belief. Trust is relatively stable over a 4 year period (0. 73). Changes in volunteering are not rel…
Intergenerational Transmission of Volunteering
In this article, I investigate the strength of intergenerational transmission of volunteering for non-profit associations in The Netherlands. Data from the Family Survey of the Dutch Population 2000 reveal that there are significant relations between current volunteering and parental volunteering in the past. While the transmission of volunteering for religious and quasi-religious ('pillarized') associations is due largely to the transmission of …
Government Support and Charitable Donations
With the growing body of literature on governance styles in which nonprofit organizations are involved in creating and implementing public services, there is a need for robust evidence on the effects of public funding on nonprofit revenues. This paper systematically reviews previous studies on the crowding-out hypothesis, which holds that private charitable donations are lower in situations of higher government support and vice versa. We find tha…
Traditional and Health-Related Philanthropy
I study the relationships of resources and personality characteristics to charitable giving, postmortem organ donation, and blood donation in a nationwide sample of persons in households in the Netherlands. I find that specific personality characteristics are related to specific types of giving: agreeableness to blood donation, empathic concern to charitable giving, and prosocial value orientation to postmortem organ donation. I find that giving …
Helping Behavior, Dispositional Empathic Concern, and the Principle of Care
This research investigates the relative strength of two correlates of helping behavior: dispositional empathic concern and a moral principle to care about others. The empathy–helping and care–helping relationships are investigated using data from the General Social Survey, a nationally representative random sample of the U.S. adult population. Ten helping behaviors are investigated. The results show that the care–helping relationship is stronger …
Who gives what and when? A scenario study of intentions to give time and money
Can Charitable Donations Compensate for a Reduction in Government Funding? The Role of Information
Are private donors willing to replace cuts in government funding? The authors conducted a survey experiment (n = 2,458) to examine how information about government funding affected decisions to donate money to a large charitable organization in the Netherlands. Providing information about actual budget cuts increased the number of donors. Most new donors were recruited among respondents who had processed the information correctly, underlining the…
Does Who Decides Really Matter? Causes and Consequences of Personal Financial Management in the Case of Larger and Structural Charitable Donations
We study causes and consequences of financial management in households in the specific case of charitable giving. We test hypotheses using couples in the Giving in the Netherlands Panel Study ( n = 1,101). We find that more relationship specific investments lead to deciding on charitable giving as one economic actor. Furthermore, we find that the partner with the highest relative educational resources has most decision making power over charitabl…
Geographical Differences in Blood Donation and Philanthropy in the Netherlands – What Role for Social Capital
The key question addressed in this paper is whether geographical differences in blood donation and philanthropy reflect differences in social capital. We do find considerable spatial variation in blood donation and philanthropy between municipalities in the Netherlands. But we do not find that blood donation and philanthropy have strong or even moderately positive relations with each other or with indicators of prosocial norms and engagement in v…
Explaining Differences in Philanthropic Behavior between Christians, Muslims, and Hindus in the Netherlands
Using survey data from the Netherlands, we find that Muslims have relatively high levels of religious philanthropic behavior and relatively low levels of secular philanthropic behavior, whereas Hindus have relatively low levels of religious philanthropic behavior and higher levels of secular philanthropic behavior. Results indicate that the community explanation and the conviction explanation of the relationship between religion and philanthropic…
Altruism in blood donation
In this paper, we use register data on all blood donors (n = 259,172) and changes in geographical locations of blood donation centers in the Netherlands over the past decade, to examine the strength of altruistic motivations in blood donation by testing how blood donor behavior changes after the cost of donating in the form of time and inconvenience increases. We examined whether closing donation centers influences blood donor lapse, and whether …
Examining the Association of Religious Context with Giving to Non-Profit Organizations
Why do citizens in religious groups and more religious countries give money to charitable causes? In this article we aim to theoretically and empirically unravel the influence of religious composition on giving to non-profit organizations across countries. Building on theories and research in sociology, social psychology, and economics we formulate hypotheses about individual- and contextual-level differences in engagement in religious and secula…
Computational Social Science for Nonprofit Studies
How can computational social science (CSS) methods be applied in nonprofit and philanthropic studies? This paper summarizes and explains a range of relevant CSS methods from a research design perspective and highlights key applications in our field. We define CSS as a set of computationally intensive empirical methods for data management , concept representation , data analysis , and visualization . What makes the computational methods “social” i…
Blood Donation across the Life Course
This article examines how blood donation loyalty changes across the life course as a result of life events. Previous studies have shown that life events affect involvement in prosocial behavior, possibly as a result of loss of human and social capital. Using registry data from the blood collection agency in the Netherlands, linked to longitudinal survey data from the Donor InSight study (N = 20,560), we examined whether life events are related to…
Trust, Accreditation, and Philanthropy in the Netherlands
Given the increasing numbers of scandals, the awareness among fund-raisers that the public’s trust is crucial for the nonprofit sector is growing. This study investigates the relationship between trust and charitable giving. Charitable organizations can increase the public’s trust by signaling their trustworthiness. The example of the Netherlands shows how a system of accreditation can be an instrument for signaling trustworthiness to the public.…
Participation in Voluntary Associations
Participation in voluntary associations is explained by different theories in sociology, psychology, and political science. Sociologists have emphasized the effects of resources such as human and social capital. Psychologists have demonstrated the role of empathy and extraversion as aspects of personality. Political scientists have considered political values and attitudes. This paper investigates the predictive value of personality characteristi…
Traditional and Health-Related Philanthropy
I study the relationships of resources and personality characteristics to charitable giving, postmortem organ donation, and blood donation in a nationwide sample of persons in households in the Netherlands. I find that specific personality characteristics are related to specific types of giving: agreeableness to blood donation, empathic concern to charitable giving, and prosocial value orientation to postmortem organ donation. I find that giving …
From Games to Giving
The central purpose of the present research is to examine the ability of social value orientation (i.e., prosocial, individualistic, and competitive orientation), as measured with methods rooted in game theory (i.e., decomposed games), to predict real-life prosocial behavior. Consistent with hypotheses, results revealed that individual differences in social value orientation are predictive of various donations. Relative to individualists and comp…
Intergenerational Transmission of Volunteering
In this article, I investigate the strength of intergenerational transmission of volunteering for non-profit associations in The Netherlands. Data from the Family Survey of the Dutch Population 2000 reveal that there are significant relations between current volunteering and parental volunteering in the past. While the transmission of volunteering for religious and quasi-religious ('pillarized') associations is due largely to the transmission of …
Geographical Differences in Blood Donation and Philanthropy in the Netherlands – What Role for Social Capital
The key question addressed in this paper is whether geographical differences in blood donation and philanthropy reflect differences in social capital. We do find considerable spatial variation in blood donation and philanthropy between municipalities in the Netherlands. But we do not find that blood donation and philanthropy have strong or even moderately positive relations with each other or with indicators of prosocial norms and engagement in v…
Voluntary Regulation of NGOs and Nonprofits
How can nonprofit organizations and NGOs demonstrate accountability to stakeholders and show that they are using funds appropriately and delivering on their promises? Many nonprofit stakeholders, including funders and regulators, have few opportunities to observe nonprofit internal management and policies. Such information deficits make it difficult for 'principals' to differentiate credible nonprofits from less credible ones. This volume examine…
Does Who Decides Really Matter? Causes and Consequences of Personal Financial Management in the Case of Larger and Structural Charitable Donations
We study causes and consequences of financial management in households in the specific case of charitable giving. We test hypotheses using couples in the Giving in the Netherlands Panel Study ( n = 1,101). We find that more relationship specific investments lead to deciding on charitable giving as one economic actor. Furthermore, we find that the partner with the highest relative educational resources has most decision making power over charitabl…
Helping Behavior, Dispositional Empathic Concern, and the Principle of Care
This research investigates the relative strength of two correlates of helping behavior: dispositional empathic concern and a moral principle to care about others. The empathy–helping and care–helping relationships are investigated using data from the General Social Survey, a nationally representative random sample of the U.S. adult population. Ten helping behaviors are investigated. The results show that the care–helping relationship is stronger …
Who gives what and when? A scenario study of intentions to give time and money
A Literature Review of Empirical Studies of Philanthropy
The authors present an overview of the academic literature on charitable giving based on a literature review of more than 500 articles. They structure their review around the central question of why people donate money to charitable organizations. They identify eight mechanisms as the most important forces that drive charitable giving: (a) awareness of need; (b) solicitation; (c) costs and benefits; (d) altruism; (e) reputation; (f) psychological…
Who gives? A literature review of predictors of charitable giving Part One
This is the first of two papers in which we present a comprehensive review of the multidisciplinary academic literature on philanthropy, identifying the predictors of charitable giving by individuals and households. For each predictor, we discuss the evidence for the mechanisms that may explain why the predictor is correlated with giving. We conclude with a brief agenda for future research. In this first paper we present the evidence on the relat…
Who gives? A literature review of predictors of charitable giving. Part Two
This is the second of two articles in which we present a comprehensive review of the multidisciplinary academic literature on philanthropy. In this article, we identify the following predictors of charitable giving by individuals and/or households: gender, family composition and income. For each predictor, we discuss the evidence for the mechanisms that may explain why the predictor is correlated with giving. We conclude with a brief agenda for f…
Trust and Volunteering
Participation in voluntary associations is often believed to make citizens more trusting of others. This paper reports longitudinal analyses of a time intensive form of participation-volunteering-and generalized social trust using data from three waves of the Giving in the Netherlands Panel Study spanning 4 years (2002-2006; n = 692) refuting this belief. Trust is relatively stable over a 4 year period (0. 73). Changes in volunteering are not rel…
Explaining Differences in Philanthropic Behavior between Christians, Muslims, and Hindus in the Netherlands
Using survey data from the Netherlands, we find that Muslims have relatively high levels of religious philanthropic behavior and relatively low levels of secular philanthropic behavior, whereas Hindus have relatively low levels of religious philanthropic behavior and higher levels of secular philanthropic behavior. Results indicate that the community explanation and the conviction explanation of the relationship between religion and philanthropic…
Examining the Association of Religious Context with Giving to Non-Profit Organizations
Why do citizens in religious groups and more religious countries give money to charitable causes? In this article we aim to theoretically and empirically unravel the influence of religious composition on giving to non-profit organizations across countries. Building on theories and research in sociology, social psychology, and economics we formulate hypotheses about individual- and contextual-level differences in engagement in religious and secula…
Altruism and Prosocial Behavior, Sociology of
Generalized Trust Through Civic Engagement? Evidence from Five National Panel Studies
According to a popular version of social capital theory, civic engagement should produce generalized trust among citizens. We put this theory to the test by examining the causal connection between civic engagement and generalized trust using multiple methods and multiple (prospective) panel datasets. We found participants to be more trusting. This was mostly likely caused by selection effects: the causal effects of civic engagement on trust were …
Government Support and Charitable Donations
This page stores full documentation of the article "Government Support and Charitable Donations: A Meta-Analysis of the Crowding-out Hypothesis" which has been published as: De Wit, A., & Bekkers, R. (2017). Government Support and Charitable Donations: A Meta-Analysis of the Crowding-out Hypothesis. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 27(2), 301-319.
Foundations Supporting Research and Innovation in Europe
This article presents the most important results of the European Foundation for Research and Innovation Study, the first study to map the roles and collective contributions of Europe’s large, heterogeneous, and fragmented sector of research and innovation foundations. The study, based on a review of about 1,000 foundations, estimates that they contribute at least $6.4 billion a year to research and innovation in Europe. While this estimate shows …
Government Support and Charitable Donations
With the growing body of literature on governance styles in which nonprofit organizations are involved in creating and implementing public services, there is a need for robust evidence on the effects of public funding on nonprofit revenues. This paper systematically reviews previous studies on the crowding-out hypothesis, which holds that private charitable donations are lower in situations of higher government support and vice versa. We find tha…
Heterogeneity in Crowding-out
De Wit, A., Bekkers, R. and Broese van Groenou, M. (2016). Heterogeneity in Crowding-out: When Are Charitable Donations Responsive To Government Support? European Sociological Review. DOI: 10.1093/esr/jcw048
De uiteenlopende effecten van overheidssubsidies aan goede doelen
Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community
The Foundations of Individuals’ Generalized Social Trust
This chapter reviews the literature on the causes of individuals’ generalized social trust (trust in unknown others) from a wide range of social science disciplines. The chapter structures the review around two broad classes of explanations: dispositional explanations (trust as a disposition) and experiential explanations (trust as a response to individual experiences). Both have been examined in a number of related lines of research, which are r…
Blood Donation across the Life Course
This article examines how blood donation loyalty changes across the life course as a result of life events. Previous studies have shown that life events affect involvement in prosocial behavior, possibly as a result of loss of human and social capital. Using registry data from the blood collection agency in the Netherlands, linked to longitudinal survey data from the Donor InSight study (N = 20,560), we examined whether life events are related to…
Psychology (24 obras) · Social Psychology (19 obras) · Sociology (19 obras) · Economics (18 obras) · Nonprofit Sector and Volunteering (18 obras) · Political science (18 obras) · Social Capital and Networks (11 obras) · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology (9 obras) · Social Psychology (9 obras) · Law (8 obras)