The effect of religious, humanitarian and financial motivations on charitable participation intention, purchase intention and attitude toward store

Islam always encourages its followers to be active in activities which are beneficial to the society. The purpose of this study was to examine people's motivations for helping others. For this purpose, we considered three religious, human and materialistic motives as possible ones for benevolent behaviors. The present study was performed with an applied purpose, an experimental method and a 2 × 2 × 3 factorial design, including the behavioral stimulus type (religious, humanitarian, materialistic) × the donated product type (food, health) × group norms (the presence of people around, the absence of people around). Research data were collected through a scenario-based questionnaire using texts and images. The statistical population of this study included students. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was used to analyze the evidence in this study according to the objectives. The authors found that religious motives were considered as the most effective motivators for charitable activities in the country. This research showed that religious motives in Iran were more effective than other motivational stimuli due to the fact that the scope of religion has had an important place in people's beliefs as a moral value. Since the present study was conducted in the period of the Covid-19 pandemic, this parameter affected the research results in a way that benevolent activities regarding health products were more effective than food products.