The results of my regression analysis revealed evidences that are contrary to my hypothesis. Based on the evidences and research approach provided by Dur and Zoutenbier (2014) and Dur and van Lent (2017) together with in-depth analysis of theoretical foundation in the related literature, my prediction was that given the altruistic preferences of private sector employees, public sector employees with higher persona-organization mission alignment volunteer less outside their work compared to private sector employees. Therefore, I expected the key explanatory variable “sector x confidence” to have negative coefficient.
Here I briefly summarize the underlying key assumptions of my hypothesis that I gathered from the related literature and theoretical framework. Fist, public sector workers tend to be more altruistic than workers in private sector, and this is in line with Dur and Zoutenbier (2014), and
many other studies that address 'public service motivation'.3 This is also observed in the survey
data I used for this analysis as well (see Figure 1). Second, my research follows Dur and van Lent (2017), with regards to the avenues available for workers to express their altruistic preferences; workers in public sector are able to express their altruistic motivation through both means of their job and outside their work, because compared to private sector jobs, public sector jobs provide more opportunities to serve the public interest or help others in need. Thus, when work provides substantial opportunities for the workers to fulfil their desire to help others, they engage in charitable activities less outside work compared to private sector workers (Dur and van Lent, 2017). On this note, the third key assumption was that since altruistic workers in public sector receive intrinsic value from fulfilling their personal "mission" through their job (Wright, 2007; Weiss and Piderit, 1999), when they work for organizations that have similar or same mission and goals, their altruistic desire is further fulfilled, thus higher persona-organization mission alignment should decrease the likelihood of public sector workers volunteering or engaging in charitable activities (Dur and van Lent, 2017).
The results of cross-country OLS regression analysis, this research has identified 2 major findings. First, given the 4 key assumptions of the research, public sector workers are in fact more likely than private sector workers to engage in charitable activities, despite their job providing them opportunities to express their altruistic preferences. Second, this phenomenon appears to be largely driven by public sector workers in non-OECD countries (less-developed countries). Contrary to my prediction, regression estimation for all 3 sample groups (full sample, and OECD and non- OECD subgroups) produced positive coefficient on the main variable of interest, which is the interaction variable of sector of employment and confidence in political parties. With the exception of OECD subgroup, the coefficient is positive and statistically significant. Contrary to the main argument of Dur and van Lent (2017), this implies that the likelihood of public sector employees volunteering or engaging in charitable activities increase when confidence in political parties
3 For 'public service motivation' in the field of public adminsitration, review literature such as Perry & Wise (1990), Rainey and Steinbauer (1999), Wright (2001), Besley and Ghatak, (2005)
increases. In other words, when the organization's mission provides ample opportunities for individuals to engage in tasks that align with their personal mission to help others or contribute to the well-being of the society, it appears to have a positive impact on their philanthropic behavior outside work. When separating the full sample to OECD and non-OECD countries however, the interaction term shows positive but loses significance for OECD countries.
While the difference in significance of the interaction variable was an unanticipated outcome, some of the findings mentioned in the study by Dur and van Lent (2017) can help us interpret the outcome. Their research uses 2 sets of survey data, one from German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) and Dutch panel data called the Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social sciences (LISS). Their first OLS regression estimation using data from SOEP has donation as the outcome variable and sector of employment as the main explanatory variable, along while controlling for altruism which they use as an indicator variable, and demographics such as gender, education, age and so on. The output shows negative and significant coefficient for public sector workers, meaning public sector employees donate significantly less compared to the private sector workers, but when income of the sample is controlled, the coefficient is still negative but becomes insignificant and move close to zero (Dur and van Lent, 2017). This is because controlling for income allowed for public sector dummy variable in their regression to recognize that public sector workers make smaller donations but also their income is lower than private sector workers (Dur and van Lent, 2017). They further compare different public sector industries to observe homogeneity across public sector; the regression results revealed that amongst the industries they compared, public administration industry produces significant and negative coefficient, while public service, education, health industry yield positive but statistically insignificant coefficients (Dur and van Lent, 2017). While SOEP provides data of monetary donation made by individuals, the data from LISS provides volunteering hours of participants, which serves as the outcome variable in their second OLS regression. The results of the regression across the full sample from LISS showed negative but insignificant coefficient for public sector workers, meaning working for public sector is not sufficient in yielding effects on individuals' hours of volunteering (Dur and van Lent, 2017). It is when they limit the sample population to age over 40 that sector of employment variable yields negative and moderately significant coefficient (at the 10% level), meaning older workers in public sector volunteer less than the older workers in private sector (Dur
and van Lent, 2017). From the same set of Dutch panel data, they found that persona-organization mission-alignment has negative relationship with hours public sector employees spend on volunteering, and while estimated effect of mission alignment is negative and significant at 10% level for the full sample, it is negative and statistically significant at 5% level for workers age over 40, indicating that mission alignment is likely to matter more for older workers in deciding how much they volunteer (Dur and van Lent, 2017).
Given the results shown in Dur and van Lent (2017), one possible reason for the insignificant coefficient of the interaction term "sector of employment x confidence in political parties" for the sample of OECD subgroup is that the regression does not account for tenure of workers in public sector, nor does it separate the sample into different age groups. Furthermore, their research use
survey data from Germany and The Netherlands, and both belong to OECD countries.4 Taken
together, it is possible that number of years individuals have worked in public sector or their age have an impact on how much voluntary activities public sector workers engage in well-developed countries. Burrman et al. (2012) discuses similar phenomenon called "tenure effect" in public employees and how it influences their behavior in charitable giving. The outcome of their experiment showed evidences that employees with shorter tenure in public sector are significantly more likely to donate to charity than their counterparts in private sector, however as public sector employees advance their tenure they make smaller donations, and eventually they donate less than their counterparts in private sector (Buurman et al., 2012). Such phenomenon is unobserved among private sector employees (Burman et al., 2012). Buurman et al., (2012) also uses survey data from The Netherlands. These evidences together with the outcome of my research suggest that individuals' tenure in public sector may be a crucial variable in analyzing philanthropic behavior of public sector employees in well-developed countries.
Turning now to the output for non-OECD subgroup, the positive and highly significant coefficient on variable confidence in political parties and the interaction term indicate that conditional increase in confidence in political parties alone increases the likelihood of individuals volunteering outside workplace for both private and pubic sector employees, but for public sector workers the
effect is much stronger. One important factor to keep in mind in interpreting the results of non- OECD subgroup is that more respondents in non-OECD countries scored the highest confidence level in political parties than the respondents in OECD countries did. Figure 4 shows the density in confidence in political parties for both groups. Respondents from non-OECD countries scoring higher than the respondents from OECD countries on the highest confidence category “a great deal” is contrary to what one might expect, considering the level of political corruption in less-developed
countries.5 While investigating this phenomenon is fruitful and intriguing on its own, it is not the
main focus of this research, so I will not to elaborate further on this particular peculiarity of the data in this research. One possible explanation for the highly significant and positive coefficient of the interaction term observed for non-OECD sample could be that in less-developed countries, volunteering opportunities might be more accessible in general and even more so for public sector workers. The World Bank currently have 1,728 projects operating over 22,449 locations in less-developed countries ("The World Bank Group: Global Reach", n.d.). Such projects facilitated by the World Bank work closely with the local governments as well as private firms ("The World Bank Group: Country Strategy", n.d.). Another possible explanation is that in less developed countries, engaging in charitable activities or participating in volunteering projects may serve as an important way to advance their career or enter into their desired profession, since population with university degree is lower in these countries compared to well-developed countries (see table 2). Employers in these countries may value volunteering experiences and other voluntary activities in the absence of formal education or academic qualifications.
The different outcomes between the 2 subgroups could also be explained by aspects more prominent in the society of well-developed countries, such as the common life style of office workers that constrain workers’ schedule, making it more difficult for public sector workers in developed countries to participate in activities outside work in general. Another explanation could
be that given the higher average income of OECD countries,6 donating money may be more
accessible and less time-consuming option to satisfy their philanthropic desire than participating
5 For data on corruption, see “Corruption Perceptions Index” published yearly by Transparency International
https://www.transparency.org/news/feature/corruption_perceptions_index_2017
6 For data of average income around the world, refer to “Average Income Around the World” published by eglitis-media at https://www.worlddata.info/about.php
in volunteering activities. List and Price (2011) analysis on charitable giving around the world revealed that countries in Western Europe, North America and Australasia (well-developed countries) occupy majority of the top 10 countries in giving money, while countries in Central Asia, Southern Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa occupy majority of top 10 countries in giving time (volunteering) (List and Price, 2011). In the same study, they rank countries by the percentage of respondents who report that they have helped a stranger in a given month. Again, majority of the countries ranked in the highest 10 countries are from Sub-Saharan Africa, Northern Africa and
some from South America and the Caribbean (List and Price, 2011).7 List and Price (2011)
performs an OLS regression analysis to examine the link between GDP per capita (taken from IMF’s World Economic Outlook), Wellbeing score (taken from the Gallup survey) and 3 different types of charitable giving; giving money, giving time and helping a stranger. Their regression analysis showed that higher GDP per capita and Wellbeing score each has positive and statistically significant effect on giving money, while higher GDP per capita does not yield statistically significant impact on giving time or helping a stranger (List and Price, 2011). Increase in Wellbeing score yields positive impact on giving time and helping a stranger, however both coefficients are significant only at 10% level (List and Price, 2011).
In sum, my OLS regression analysis produced results that are contrary to my prediction – compared to private sector employees, given their sufficient level of altruistic preference, public sector workers are more likely to engage in volunteering work or charitable activities. In addition, for public sector employees, higher mission alignment increases their likelihood of volunteering even more than it does to their counterparts in private sector. There are, of course, limitations to this research, which will be elaborated in the following section. While recognizing the limitations of the research, I believe that findings of this research contribute to reassure the core element of public service motivation framework. The essence of public service motivation discourse is that public servants tend to have higher altruistic preference than those in private sector, that they are intrinsically motivated and care great deal about the well-being of public (Perry and Wise, 1990; Delfgaauw and Dur, 2008; Rainey and Steinbauer, 1990). As mentioned above, scholars
7 See Appendix D for the ranking in giving money, giving time and helping strangers presented in List and Price (2011)
have identified a particular ethic and motivation unique to those who choose jobs in public sector, and that those with such ethic have tendency to value extrinsic values such as monetary rewards less than workers in private sector (Houston, 2005; Brewer and Selden 1998). Houston (2005) states that such motivation is a characteristic of an individual, rather than of employment sector. Thus, positive and significant mutual effect of public sector jobs and mission alignment is a testament to public service motivation framework– if a public sector agent is intrinsically motivated, highly altruistic and has a mission to enhance the lives of others or those in need, it is no surprise that they also engage in volunteering work or participate in charity activities through means other than their job. More importantly, if public sector workers receive intrinsic reward by the nature of jobs in public sector that gives more opportunities to contribute to the well-being of the society than private sector jobs, it is possible that they also receive the same type of reward by participating in voluntary activities outside their work.