Fatalism and donation intention: who is more in control of their own life?

Abstract

To date, consumer psychology literature has ignored the role of fatalistic beliefs in donation intention. Two subsequent quantitative survey studies (Ns = 289; 350) address this issue by investigating consumers’ fatalistic beliefs together with internal beliefs, empathy, and donation intention. In the first study, the new Fatalistic Story Scale is developed to measure how people evaluate others’ fate vs. self-fate through hypothetical life events. The second study analyzed people’s fatalistic beliefs’ relationship with donation intention and empathy. Findings of the first study suggested that people approach others’ lives more fatalistically than their own life. Considering this insight together with certain negative effects of fatalistic beliefs on beneficial and positive behaviors that have proven by studies from various disciplines, fatalism is expected to be negatively related to empathy and donation intention. Conversely, second study’s findings suggested that fatalism positively predicts empathy and donation intention. This contradiction and other findings are discussed together with implications.