Korean Journal of Policy Studies

Graduate School of Public Administration, Seoul National University

Korean J. Policy Stud. 2019; 34(3):71-96

pISSN: 1225-5017, eISSN: 2765-2807

Article

What Makes Immigrants Generous?: The Effects of Acculturative Stress and Resources

Seong-gin Moon¹

¹This research was supported by Inha University. Seong-gin Moon is a professor in the Department of Public Administration at Inha University in Incheon, Republic of Korea. E-mail: moons@inha.ac.kr.

Â© Copyright 2019 Graduate School of Public Administration, Seoul National University. This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Received: Jul 18, 2019; Revised: Nov 10, 2019; Revised: Dec 30, 2019; Accepted: Dec 30, 2019

Published Online: Dec 31, 2019

Abstract

Although the literature in the field has examined why and how individuals give, there is still a lack of systematic research regarding immigrants’ philanthropic giving behavior in the United States. This study pays attention to the influence of two major dimensions, the acculturative stress that immigrants undergo during the immigration process and the personal resources that they possess in the United States, on their giving. The empirical analysis presented here is based on a survey of 1,493 Korean immigrants and indicates that acculturative stress moves in negative direction as predicted but is not statistically significant in estimating giving. In terms of personal resources—human (education and income), social (marriage, homeownership, employment), and cultural (religiosity) —turn out to be significant indicators of giving.

Keywords: philanthropic giving; acculturative stress; human resources; social resources; cultural resources