The moderating effect of moral licensing on religiosity and charity donations

The impact of Covid-19 has been felt on a global scale, with several industries, including charities facing severe setbacks as a result of the pandemic. In Malaysia, for example, charities are facing financial struggles to meet the needs of the underprivileged. Above that, global unemployment rates have witnessed a sharp increase. This means that more and more people may not be able to afford to donate to charity. This study strives to aid charities in Malaysia in formulating donation collection programmes to increase funds collected as the effects of the pandemic continue to be felt. This study aims to do this by examining morals through the perspective of moral licensing. More specifically, it will focus on the moderating role of moral licensing on religiosity and charitable donations. This was done through the use of a survey that was sent out to tertiary education students across Malaysia. 432 responses were eventually completed, and after cleaning the data, 420 observations were used in the final analysis. I used ANOVA to analyse whether religiosity influenced charitable donations and whether moral licensing influenced charitable giving. Moreover, OLS regression was used to assess the relationship between moral licensing, religiosity and charitable donations. The results revealed no interaction between religiosity, moral licensing and charitable donations. This means whether an individual was highly religious or not, they were likely to contribute after having already contributed. However, the results also showed Hindus, Christians and Muslims expressed less moral licensing than Atheists and Agnostics. Additionally, the results showed that most individuals who donate do so in order to aid other people. The recommendations are for charities to conduct donation campaigns near places of worship. However, charities that do not conduct donation campaigns near religious places should appeal to people’s interests rather than morals. Additionally, charities should demonstrate how the donations collected have been used to help others