Environmental Philanthropy and Environmental Behavior in Five Countries: Is There Convergence Among Youth?

This paper compares and contrasts environmental philanthropy, environmental behavior, and their determinants among university students in five countries: Canada, Germany, Israel, South Korea, and the United States. The paper’s unique contribution to the nonprofit literature is its focus on environmental philanthropy as an unexplored form of philanthropic behavior, and the ability to test environmental philanthropy in an international setting and in comparison to other modes of environmental behavior. By environmental philanthropy, we mean giving to, and volunteering in, various environmental non-governmental organizations, and by environmental behavior, we refer to daily behaviors in the private sphere with ecological implications. We hypothesize that although the five countries vary on several characteristics, the student populations—who are young, educated, and exposed to global ideas and norms—will be relatively similar to each other in their environmental and philanthropic behavior and in the determinants of such behavior. To test this hypothesis, a standardized questionnaire was administered to 8,477 students on five campuses. Results show significant differences between students in their environmental philanthropic behavior, as well as in the demographic and attitudinal determinants of such behaviors.