Self-interested exchange fiction & the indigenous psychology of loob as an explanation to altruistic donation behavior: An economic approach

Holmes, Miller and Lerner (2001) have conducted a field experiment with the use of two field studies, which verified the hypothesis that people are more willing to help a charitable organization when the donation is considered as an economic transaction rather than a charitable act or appeal. The participants of study 1, though the offered product is of little interest or appeal to them, still donated more money to the charity with the use of product in exchange for their donation. The participants were also responsive to the level of need upon being offered a product in exchange for their donation, thus cohering to the idea of the exchange provided psychological cover explaining their act of compassion. While in study 2, the existence of a more bargain price increased the willingness of the participants to purchase a product, but within the idea of a high need of the victim from a charitable organization. The proponents used an induced, controlled and modified experimental design patterned after the study of Holmes, Miller and Lerner (2001). With the goal of verifying the existence of exchange fiction in the Philippines, the proponents utilized three treatments namely the donation condition which tested the respondents\u27 propensity to donate a sum of money under one of the two conditions: direct donation or exchange condition, the location condition which classified the respondents according to their locations (rural, urban, foreign) with the intention of determining the location group where exchange fiction is prevalent, the need manipulation which aims to show the responsiveness of the respondents to the victim\u27s need. As the field experiment was conducted by the proponents, it was found out that Filipino DLSU-M students are more of a homo sociologicus than homo economicus. The same idea could also be said to the foreign DLSU-M students. This just means that the foreign students have assimilated and adopted almost the same Filipino culture within their present environment