Does civic engagement breed trust? According to a popular version of social capital theory, civic engagement should produce generalized trust among citizens. In a new paper accepted for publication in Political Psychology, Erik van Ingen (Tilburg University) and I 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.

A new version of the User Manual for the Giving in the Netherlands Panel Survey is now available: version 2.2. The GINPS12 questionnaire is here (in Dutch).

Nalatenschappen: goededoelenorganisaties ontvangen steeds meer inkomsten uit nalatenschappen, naar verwachting €86 miljard tot 2059. Evenementen: goededoelenorganisaties ontvangen steeds meer inkomsten uit evenementen zoals Alpe d’Huzes waar enthousiaste vrijwilligers sponsorgelden voor werven.

Nalatenschappen zijn een steeds belangrijkere bron van inkomsten voor  goede doelen. En deze trend zal zich de komende jaren naar verwachting doorzetten: er zijn door de baby boom na de Tweede Wereldoorlog veel ouderen in Nederland, zij zijn vaak vermogend, en deze rijke grijze golf zal de komende jaren komen te overlijden. Net zoals we aan de kust een grote golf op het strand af zien komen.

Ralph-Friso Belksma, student in de master Public Administration in Leiden, schrijft: “Voor een onderzoek voor mijn studie ben ik op zoek naar enkele gegevens met betrekking tot geef gedrag. Ik kan hier alleen moeilijk gegevens over vinden. Vandaar mijn vraag: Geven vrouwen meer geld uit aan goede doelen dan mannen? Hoe oud zijn zij en hoeveel geld geven zij gemiddeld uit? Ik had deze gegevens graag in 1 tabel willen zien.

This post in pdf How generous are the wealthy? Surely wealth enables citizens to give higher amounts to charitable causes, but does wealth also make people more generous? Do the wealthy give a higher proportion of their income? Using data from the High Net Worth supplement to the 2012 wave Giving in the Netherlands Panel Survey we can answer this question.

Crowdfunding is a new model of financing public goods. In the Netherlands it has become highly visible by the cutbacks in public funding for the arts. Crowdfunding has grown exponentially in the past years, not just in projects for the arts, but also in financing commercial startups and recently also in funding for science. However, the success of projects advertised on crowdfunding platforms varies enormously.

Op de Dag van de Filantropie 2013 – het jaarlijks terugkerend evenement op de laatste donderdag van april – is dit jaar het boek ‘Geven in Nederland 2013’ gepresenteerd.

PDF of this post The Teaching Trap I did it again this week – I tried to teach students. Yes, It’s my job, and I love it. But that’s completely my own fault. If it were for the incentives I encounter in the academic institution where I work, it would be far better to not spend time on teaching at all. For my career in academia, the thing that counts most heavily is how many publications in top journals I can realize.

Dear journalists, before we embark on a journey along all too familiar landscapes, please read this. Q (Question) 1. Mr. Bekkers, you study ‘giving to charities’. How do you know whether a donation to a charity is well spent? U (Unanswer) 1. Well, I don’t, actually. Indeed my research is about giving to charities. I do not study how charities spend the funds they raise.

As of January 1, 2013, I am appointed as an extraordinary professor Social aspects of prosocial behavior at Faculty of Social Sciences at VU University Amsterdam. The chair is supported by a grant from the Van der Gaag Foundation of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) for a period of five years. In my research I will focus on the explanation of philanthropic behavior.