International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing

Int. J. Nonprofit Volunt. Sect. Mark. 13: 1–11 (2008)

Published online 12 February 2007 in Wiley InterScience
(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/nvsm.297

Determinants of charitable donation

intentions: A structural equation
model
Sampath Kumar Ranganathan*, y and Walter H. Henleyy
Fogelman College of Business and Economics, The University of Memphis, USA

Currently charities have to depend more on individual donors and less on the govern-
ment for funding. Hence, understanding the individual donor and what motivates them
to contribute to charities is something, which has been of increasing interest to nonprofit
marketers. In this article, a path model for the charitable donation process of a religious
individual is developed and tested. The variables that are used in the model are religiosity,
attitude towards helping others (AHO), attitude towards charitable organizations (ACO),
attitude towards the advertisement (Attad) and behavioral intentions (BI). The results
suggest that AHO by itself does not cause BI. Altruistic people need to be targeted with an
appropriate advertisement message. Since religiosity is an important causal variable for
AHO, segmenting and targeting individuals who are religious would be pertinent.
Attempts to build favorable ACO would also be worthwhile.

Religiosity

Charitable donation intentions

Charity advertisements.

Path model for predicting intentions to donate..
Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

My brothers, what use is it for a man to say he has faith when he does nothing to
show it? Can that faith save him? Suppose a brother or a sister is in rags with not
enough food for the day, and one of you says, ‘Good luck to you, keep yourselves
warm, and have plenty to eat’, but does nothing to supply their bodily needs, what is
the good of that? So with faith; if it does not lead to action, it is in itself a lifeless thing.
(Bible; James 2:14–17).

*Correspondence to: Sampath Kumar Ranganathan, Uni-
versity of Memphis, Fogelman College of Business and
Economics, The University of Memphis, Memphis, TN
38152. E-mail: smgnthn@memphis.edu
y
Sampath Kumar Ranganathan and Walter H. Henley are
Doctoral Students of Marketing.
Introduction
Charity and religion go hand in hand. Major
religions like Christianity, Hinduism, Islam,
Judaism, and Buddhism stress the importance
of helping the needy. It is a command
for Christians to help others bountifully
and sufficiently (Deuteronomy, 15:7–11).

Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Int. J. Nonprofit Volunt. Sect. Mark., February 2008
DOI: 10.1002/nvsm
2 S. K. Ranganathan and W. H. Henley
Christianity has strong commands to the
faithful about helping others (i.e., The parable
of the Good Samaritan). Even people who
are not of the Faith are to be loved and helped
(Colossians 3:11 Romans 12:14–20). Comma-
nds from God have inspired religious people to
start hospitals, schools, and charitable organ-
izations like Missionaries of Charity to help
theneedy. Like Christianity major religions of
the world like Hinduism and Islam stress the
importance of helping the needy. Hindus are
required to remove their sins by donating
Cows, money, and land to the poor. An annual
charitable donation called as Zakkat is con-
sidered to be a mandatory religious duty of a
Muslim.
Two-thirds of the world’s population has
various religious affiliations and this is often
used as a plausible rationale for their intentions
and behavior (Paloutzian, 1996). Since all
major religions stress the importance of
charitable actions we would expect religious
people to donate generously to charities.
However, the situation is less than heavenly
for many nonprofit firms as there is intense
competition for charitable donations. Cur-
rently there are more than 1.4 million charities
in USA, (Giving USA, 2006) which creates
intense competition for funds (Sargeant,
1999). Thus, the non-profit marketing sector
faces severe competition like any other
business. Consequently donors have also
begun to feel that non-profit organizations
are big businesses (Blum, 2002). Adding to the
woes of non-profit organizations is the fact that
government, the largest donor is slowly
reducing its contribution to non-profits and
is demanding that public should contribute
instead (Nichols, 2004). Hence non-profits
have to depend mostly upon individual donors.
In 2005, individual donors were the single
largest source of charitable donations account-
ing for 76.5% of charitable donations out of a
total of $260.28 billion (Giving USA, 2006).
This statistic is very important for non-profit
organizations to understand the individual
donor, why he/she patronizes a non-profit
organization and what spurs him/her to donate
to a non-profit organization.
Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
What makes an individual donate to a
charity? Many variables have been cited as
reasons for this behavior. Several areas have
been researched including: attitudes toward
charitable organizations (Webb et al., 2000),
altruism (Piliavin and Chang, 1990), religiosity
(Hoge, 1995), involvement (Chiang, 2003),
donor characteristics (Pessemier et al., 1977)
and size of request (Reingen, 1978). Studies
have also focused on personal characteristics
and the norms of donors. Rich donors may see
giving as an obligation that is part of their
current privileged or posthumous position
(Ostrower, 1995). Moral norms and guilt were
also found to be related to intentions to give to
charities (Moore et al., 1985). In a special issue
of Journal of Business Research focusing on
non-profits, Bennett and Sargeant (2005) stress
the need for more studies on individual donors
and particularly stress studies that develop a
comprehensive model of donor behavior.
Hence in this paper we would like to
investigate charitable giving intentions of
individuals and the potential impact of religion
on BI of donations to charity.
Conceptual framework
Despite the abundance of consumer research
supporting the relationship between attitudes
and behavior, little is known about individuals’
charitable attitudes (Webb et al., 2000).
Additionally, businesses have long used seg-
mentation to identify and target markets to
enhance the impact of the marketing mix.
Likewise, effective segmentation can enable
non-profit marketers to improve their
marketing strategies in the areas of pro-
motion, positioning, pricing, and distribution
(Schlegelmilch et al., 1992). A few researchers
(e.g., Schlegelmilch, 1998; Harvey, 1990) have
attempted to identify demographic, socio-
economic, and psychographic variables that
influence charitable giving and differentiate
donors from non-donors, but this has proven to
be a difficult task (Webb et al., 2000). The
heterogeneity of the contributing public,
charitable organizations and types of gifts are
among the factors contributing to the difficulty
Int. J. Nonprofit Volunt. Sect. Mark., February 2008
DOI: 10.1002/nvsm
Determinants of charitable donation intentions
of differentiating donors from non-donors.
However, as mentioned earlier, religion is a
pervasive demographic segment which may be
a significant explanation variable of note.
The ability to measure attitudes toward
charitable giving is important for research
scholars, policymakers, and practitioners alike.
Research scholars need measures of attitudes
toward charitable giving to develop and
empirically test theories of donation behavior.
Valid and reliable measures of attitudes
influencing charitable giving are important
for policymakers facing tough decisions invol-
ving the allocation of governmental resources
to social problems, as well as the regulation
and taxation of NPOs. More important, such
measures aid non-profit practitioners in their
efforts to develop effective and efficient
marketing strategies to attract and retain
donors.
The extant marketing literature indicates
theimportance of differentiating between
AHOand ACO. While a few studies examine-
attitudes toward charitable giving (e.g.,
Pessemier et al., 1977; Burnkrant and Page,
1982; McIntyre et al., 1986) and attitudes
toward charitable organizations (Schlegel-
milch, 1998; Harvey, 1990), the measures
used share several common weaknesses. These
complex constructs have frequently been
theorized as single-item measures (Schlegel-
milch, 1998) posing a threat to internal validity
and reliability. Studies examining single charity
lack the ability to make generalizations.
(Adams and Lonial, 1984; Schlegelmilch,
1998), while others are limited by very small
sample sizes (Radley and Kennedy, 1995). In
addition, cross-disciplinary contributions are
seldom incorporated in studies examining
charitable behavior, resulting in a highly
fragmented body of knowledge (Schlegelmilch
et al., 1992; Bendapudi et al., 1996). Diverse
theories and empirical approaches across
disciplines make comparison and synthesis
of findings difficult and limit the usefulness of
prior measures. In order to avoid such pitfalls
we have incorporated multiple item scales,
which have been reported to possess good
reliability and validity.
Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Int. J. Nonprofit Volunt. Sect. Mark., February 2008
3
Attitude towards helping others and
Altruism
Webb et al. (2000) defines Attitude towards
Helping Others (AHO) as ‘Global and relatively
enduring evaluations with regard to helping or
assisting other people’. Webb et al. (2000)
who came up with the scale to measure AHO,
does not differentiate it from altruism. They
view altruism as a helping motive but also
point out that attitudes are embedded in
cognitive structures including beliefs, values
and other attitudes. In psychology, scholars
differ about definitions of altruism and no
single acceptable definition of altruism exists
(Piliavin and Chang, 1990). Altruism is defined
as a cognitive activity to help others by Brewer
(2003). Altruism is defined as an attitude by
Frydman et al. (1995), as a motive by Sober
(1990), as a helping behavior by Schwartz
(1970) and as a desire to improve another’s
condition (Karylowski, 1982). But from the
way altruism is conceived and defined in
literature we find it to be similar to AHO.
Hence, in this study we view AHO and altruism
as conceptually identical variables.
Hypothesis development
Helping others is recognized as a universal trait
stressed by all major religions of the world.
Chau et al. (1990) found religiosity to be
positively correlated with altruism. Church
attendees were found to be more altruistic
than non-attendees (Smith et al., 1999). Those
who attend church are twice as likely to
volunteer to help others compared to those
who do not attend. (Wilson and Janoski, 1995).
Specific to this research, prior research has
shown that religious Christians were found to
be one of the potential sources for charitable
giving because of the motivation to give for
religious reasons and out of a sense of duty
(Slyke et al., 2005). Further several studies
have connected practice of religion, church
attendance, and charitable behavior (Hoge,
1995; Schneider, 1996). Religious tenants
encourage even the poor to donate to charities
(Iannacone, 1998).
DOI: 10.1002/nvsm
4 S. K. Ranganathan and W. H. Henley
From literature we can understand that
religiosity is closely connected with develop-
ing a positive AHO. Wilkes et al. (1986), view
religiosity to encompass one’s religious beliefs,
frequency of worship attendance and per-
ceived importance of spiritual values. Thus, we
hypothesize that religiosity encourages people
to have an attitude to help others:
H1: Religiosity has a direct positive effect
on AHO.
Webb et al. (2000) argues that for individ-
uals with a positive AHO, donating to
charitable organizations is only one way to
attain the goal of helping others. Further it is
argued that ACO is expected to be positively
correlated with charitable giving and that
people who are high in ACO will in turn
make donations to charities. AHO is more
general in nature while ACO is more specific in
nature. Webb et al. (2000) fit the two variables
of AHO and ACO in Eagly and Chaiken’s (1993)
terminology of attitudes toward behaviors and
attitudes toward targets. AHO fits into the
general category of attitude toward behavior
and ACO fits into the more specific category of
attitude toward targets. Based upon the
theorizing of Webb et al. (2000) it is thus
hypothesized that ACO is predicted by AHO.
Hence based upon the above said arguments
we hypothesize that AHO has a direct positive
effect on ACO and ACO has a direct positive
effect on BI.
H2: AHO has a direct positive effect on ACO.
H3: ACO has a direct positive effect on BI.
Brunel and Nelson (2000) indicate that the
world-view of people is a tool to explain their
evaluations of advertisement appeals. Brunel
and Nelson (2000) did not give a definition of
the variable ‘caring world view,’ but they do
explain it as helping mindset and kindness
towards others, which is similar to our
generalization of AHO. People, who have a
caring worldview, helping mindset and kind-
ness toward others, tend to more closely
Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Int. J. Nonprofit Volunt. Sect. Mark., February 2008
evaluate a charity advertisement with help-
others appeal more positively. Hence based
upon the argument of Brunel and Nelson
(2000) we hypothesize that AHO will have a
direct positive impact on Attad.
H4: AHO has a direct positive effect on
Attad.
Many studies have highlighted the import-
ance of advertising in determining behavioral
intentions (BI). Shimp (1981) says that it is
important to produce favorable attitudes
towards advertisements in the minds of
customers. Shimp (1981) argues that quality
of an advertisement depends upon creating a
favorable attitude toward the advertisement
which in turn has a direct impact on customer
choice behavior. Duncan and Nelson (1985)
argue that attitude towards the advertisement
has a significant, direct positive relationship
with BI. Hence based upon these arguments
we postulate a direct positive relationship
between Attad and intentions to donate. Thus,
we hypothesize that the following:
H5: Attad will have a direct positive effect
BI.
There is also evidence suggesting a direct
relationship between altruism (substituted
here as AHO) and BI. Altruistic reasons like
‘wanting to help others’ cause people to
volunteer (Sills, 1957). Altruism was found
to be a strong motive for charitable donations
(Piliavin and Chang, 1990). Chiang (2003)
reports a direct relationship between altruism
and BI. Hence, we included that direct path in
our model and came to our sixth hypothesis
(Figure 1):
H6: AHO will have a direct positive effect
on BI
Experiment
We used the one- group- post- test only
research design specified by Shadish et al.
DOI: 10.1002/nvsm
Determinants of charitable donation intentions
Religiosity AHO
Figure 1. Theoretically proposed path model.
(2002). This research design has no need for a
control group. We created a fictitious adver-
tisement for a fictitious charity with a small
donation cue of $24 per annum. According to
Bendapudi et al. (1996), the size of the
donation request affects charitable donation,
so we kept the size of the request at a smaller
amount of $24 per annum (or $2 per month).
Respondents were given a printed advertise-
ment copy of this fictitious charity and were
asked to fill out a questionnaire.
Participants
Data was collected from students of a major
metropolitan university in the mid-southern
United States. Two hundred and forty surveys
were administered, out of which 26 were
rejected because students left many responses
blank. A total of 214 surveys were retained for
the final analysis. Hair et al. (2006) recom-
mends that for structural equation models with
five or fewer constructs and higher item
communalities (0.60 or higher), sample size
of 100–150 can be considered as adequate. Our
study has five constructs and all communalities
except one (ACO item C2, commu-
nality ¼ 0.41) are above 0.60 mark. Hence
our sample size of 214 can be considered as
adequate. The sample demographics were 49%
male, 51% female, 87% Christian, 7% other
religion, and 5% no religion. This sample
reasonably reflected the American religious
demographic standards. The mean age of
respondents was 25 with a standard deviation
of 7.02 and a range of 18–54 years.
Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
5
ACO
BI
Aad
Measures
Attitude toward the advertisement was
measured by a four item, 7-point semantic
differential scale developed by Holbrook and
Batra (1987). Behavioral intention was
measured by a four-item, 5-point scale of Coyle
and Thorson (2001). Attitude toward charita-
ble organizations was measured by a five item,
5-point scale developed by Webb et al., (2000).
AHO was measured by a four item, 5-point
scale developed by Webb et al., (2000).
Religiosity was measured by a four item,
5-point agree to disagree religiosity scale of
Wilkes et al. (1986). This scale has been
accepted to be a reliable measure of religiosity
(Vitell and Paolillo, 2003). The scale measures
religiosity as the level of respondent’s religious
commitment.
Assessing the measures
The results of our measurement can be only as
good as our measures and we need to find out
whether our measures are good and corre-
spond to the underlying theory. We started
testing our measures using factor analysis. The
21 items representing the 5 latent variables
were subjected to exploratory (EFA) and
confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). We ran
EFA by using maximum likelihood factor
extraction and oblique rotation. The five
factors, which emerged accounted for
59.69% of the variance. All items loaded
heavily on the hypothesized a priori factors.
All items except one ACO item (Item C2: Much
of the money given to charities is wasted) had
Int. J. Nonprofit Volunt. Sect. Mark., February 2008
DOI: 10.1002/nvsm
6 S. K. Ranganathan and W. H. Henley

Table 1. Reliability and completely standardized loadings: confirmatory factor analysis

Construct Item Item loading t value

Religiosity (a ¼ 0.83) 1. Church attendance 0.70 10.81

2. Spiritual values are important 0.71 10.99
3. If Americans were more religious 0.74 11.59
4. Self perceived religiosity 0.79 12.50
Attitude Towards Advertisement (a ¼ 0.82) 1.Like the ad 0.68 10.39
2.Favorable 0.80 12.99
3.Positive 0.81 13.22
4. Advertisement is good 0.67 10.29
Behavioral Intentions (BI) (a ¼ 0.89) 1. Likely to donate 0.91 16.77
2.Will donate next time 0.87 15.78
3. Will definitely donate 0.90 16.61
4. Will recommend 0.64 10.09
Attitude Towards Helping Others 1.Help others 0.71 11.46
(AHO) (a ¼ 0.87) 2. Helping is important 0.78 13.08
3. People should be charitable 0.90 16.16
4. Help people in need 0.72 11.63
Attitude Towards Charitable Organizations 1. Good causes 0.62 9.03
(ACO) (a ¼ 0.78) 2. Charities waste money 0.49 6.83
3. Positive image on charities 0.77 11.76
4. Charities are successful 0.69 10.45
5. Charities are useful 0.65 9.66
Model statistics:

x2df 179 ¼ 349.7, p ¼ 0.00

NNFI ¼ 0.91, CFI ¼ 0.92, IFI ¼ 0.92, RMR ¼ 0.07

RMSEA ¼ 0.065, 90% Confidence Interval for RMSEA ¼ 0.054 to 0.075

factor loadings of more than 0.6. All items were and found that the measures exhibited
retained after the exploratory factor analysis. convergent and discriminant validities.
Next we proceeded to test internal consist- Harman’s (1967) single factor test was used
ency of our measures. Internal consistency of to test for common method bias. Hence, we
our measures was tested using Cronbach’s conclude that our measures are reliable,
co-efficient alpha. For all the measures coeffi- exhibit convergent and discriminant validity
cient alpha was above 0.7 which suggested and do not exhibit common method bias
that the measures were reliable (Nunnally, (Table 1).
1978) (Table 1 and 2).
The 21 items were subject to confirmatory
Table 2. Mean standard deviation and correlations table
factor analysis. The model fit statistics
suggest that the hypothesized model fits
BI Aad ACO AHO Religion
the data satisfactorily (NNFI ¼ 0.91, CFI ¼
0.92, IFI ¼ 0.92, x2 df 179 ¼ 349.7, p ¼ 0.00,
Attad 0.40
RMR ¼ 0.07, RMSEA ¼ 0.06, 90% Confidence ACO 0.36 0.06
Interval for RMSEA ¼ 0.054 to 0.075). (Hu and AHO 0.36 0.22 0.44
Bentler, 1999). We ran tests for convergent RELIGIOSITY 0.21 0.20 0.22 0.41 1.00
Mean 2.81 4.56 3.70 4.07 3.56
and discriminant validities using the method SD 0.95 1.18 0.57 0.69 0.94
suggested by Anderson and Gerbing (1988)

Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Int. J. Nonprofit Volunt. Sect. Mark., February 2008
DOI: 10.1002/nvsm
Determinants of charitable donation intentions 7

Model and hypothesis testing
The hypothesized model was tested using the
sample covariance matrix as input to Lisrel
8.51 (Jöreskog and Sörbom, 2001). With
the exception of the x2 statistic, results
indicate that the model fit was acceptable.
(x2df183 ¼ 354.16 p ¼ 0.00, NNFI ¼ 0.91, CFI ¼
0.92, IFI ¼ 0.92, RMSEA ¼ 0.06, RMR ¼ 0.07).
(Hu and Bentler, 1999) (Table 3).
The results in Table 3 indicate that the
hypothesized linkages among all constructs
with the exception of the path between
AHO and BI were statistically significant
(t-values  2.0). The antecedent variables
explain around 31% of the variance in the
dependent variable BI. AHO explains nearly a
quarter of the variance of the variable AHO.
Religiosity explains around 16% of the variance
in the dependent variable AHO and 8% of the
variance in the dependent variable Attitude
towards advertisements. The path between
AHO and BI is not significant. But we have
statistically significant indirect effects between
these variables. Hence we tested whether ACO
and attitude towards advertisement mediate
the path between AHO and BI.
To test for mediation we ran three models
and compared it with the baseline model. In
Model 1 we did not include the path between
ACO and BI. In model 2 we did not include the
path between Attad and BI. In model 3 we did
not include the path between AHO and BI. The
x2 statistics indicate full mediation between
AHO and BI. Compared with the full model,
~ x2 is not significant at the p < 0.05 level for
model 3. Even if we exclude the path between
AHO and BI, there is no significant change in
statistic or model fit. Thus, we have a strong
case for ACO and Attad completely mediating
the path between AHO and BI.
The model validated by our study is as
follows (Figure 2):
Discussion
Results from this study indicate that religiosity
is an important determinant of AHO, ACO,
Attad, and BI. Religiosity has a statistically
significant indirect relationship with ACO
(Effect Size ¼ 0.2, t ¼ 3.92), Attad (Effect
Size ¼ 0.11, t ¼ 2.98) and BI (Effect Size ¼ 0.13,
t ¼ 3.42). This indicates that individuals who

Table 3. Model parameter estimates and goodness-of-fit statistics (n ¼ 214)

Estimates and fit statistics Standardized estimate t-value R2

Direct effects:
Attitude towards advertisement ! BI 0.39 4.94
ACO ! BI 0.30 3.35
AHO ! BI 0.06 0.76 0.31
AHO ! ACO 0.50 5.37 0.25
AHO ! Attitude towards advertisement 0.29 3.49 0.08
Religiosity ! AHO 0.40 4.95 0.16
Indirect effects:
AHO ! BI 0.26 4.13
Religiosity ! BI 0.13 3.42
Religiosity ! Attitude towards ad 0.11 2.98
Religiosity ! ACO 0.20 3.92
Goodness of fit statistics:
x2df183 ¼ 354.16, p ¼ 0.00
NNFI ¼ 0.91
CFI ¼ 0.92
IFI ¼ 0.92
RMSEA ¼ 0.064
RMR ¼ 0.07

Note: t-values  2.0 indicate a significant coefficient. R2 indicates the proportion of variance accounted for in each
dependent construct.

Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Int. J. Nonprofit Volunt. Sect. Mark., February 2008
DOI: 10.1002/nvsm
8 S. K. Ranganathan and W. H. Henley
Religiosity AHO
Figure 2. Validated path model.
exhibit high levels of religiosity will be
altruistic, will have positive attitudes towards
charitable organizations, will evaluate charita-
ble advertisements more positively and will
have positive intentions to donate to a
charitable organization. Altruism by itself
doesn’t create BI. People should have a
favorable ACO and Attad.
Managerial Implications
Religiosity is an important antecedent variable
for predicting charitable donation intentions.
Religiosity directly affects donors to have
favorable AHO and indirectly affects donors
to have a positive ACO and Attad. Even though
altruism is an important variable for under-
standing charitable donation process, altruism
by itself doesn’t cause BI. Its effect on BI is
completely mediated by ACO and Attad. Hence
managers of charitable organizations should
pay attention to the advertisement message. If
people have a favorable attitude towards the
advertisement, they will have positive inten-
tions to donate. Thus designing the advertise-
ment and advertisement message becomes
important and by logical extension pre-testing
the advertisement before use is recommended.
Our study indicates that as religiosity of an
individual increases, higher is the possibility
that a person will have a more favorable AHO,
ACO, and intentions to donate. Since religiosity
indirectly causes people to have positive
attitude towards charity advertisements,
charity advertisements that target religious
people will be more effective.
Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Int. J. Nonprofit Volunt. Sect. Mark., February 2008
ACO
BI
Aad
Religiosity is important, but how do we
identify the religious? For marketing prac-
titioners religiosity is a multi-dimensional
construct. A major dimensional measure of a
person’s religiosity is his/her frequency of
religious service attendance. Hence charities
can consider targeting religious individuals on
the basis of their frequency of religious service
attendance. Special advertising or direct mar-
keting campaigns can be launched to target
people who regularly visit churches. Managers
of charities can consider approaching religious
people through church gatherings, sponsoring
spiritual events and programs and sending
direct mail to members of religious groups. It
should not be overlooked by practitioners that
religiosity is considered a universal construct
which bridges all religions. Hence a general
media advertisement with a generic religiosity
appeal would be appropriate to reach a broad
target market (over 2/3 of the world’s
population has some religious perspective).
We believe that our study also has implica-
tions for academic researchers. Since ACO is an
important determinant of intentions to donate,
its relationship with other variables like Attad
and religiosity can be studied in detail.
Particularly we stress the need to study the
relationship between Attad and ACO. Does a
positive Attad cause people to have positive
ACO? Can ACO be built through Attad? Is this
relationship mediated or moderated by any
other variable? If this important linkage is
studied, charities will benefit by designing
advertisement campaigns to increase attitude
toward charitable organizations. We recom-
mend that future researchers can consider
DOI: 10.1002/nvsm
Determinants of charitable donation intentions
studying the predictor variables of ACO and
how to build ACO among non-religious people.
Every study has limitations and our study is
no exception to this rule. Our study was done
in one geographical area, with one size of
request, one type of charity and with a student
sample. Most of the respondents were Chris-
tians. The particular advertisement used was
similar to direct marketing and the ability to
make generalizations of results across other
advertising media should be tested by future
researchers. We hope that this model will be
tested by future studies across different
geographical settings, advertising media, reli-
gions, and donor groups.
Biographical notes
Sampath Kumar Ranganathan is a doctoral
student of Marketing in the Fogelman College
of Business and Economics at the University of
Memphis. He is an ABD and currently is
working on his dissertation. His research
interests are in the fields of Services Marketing,
consumar Behavior, Advertising and Non-
profit Marketing.
Walter H. Henley is a doctoral student of
Marketing in the fogelman College of Business
and Economics at the University of Memphis.
He is an ABD and currently is working on his
dissertation. His research interests are in the
fields of Social Marketing, Religion, Advertising
and Non-profit Marketing.
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