Warm Glow (2025)

P. 1–5.

Mersiyanova I. V., Ivanova N.

The warm glow research draws on the concepts of pure and impure altruism. Pure altruism assumes that individuals give purely because there is a need to give and people simply demand more public goods (Saito, 2015). In other words, the sole motive for charitable giving is the utility derived from the charity’s output. Impure altruism generates giving that benefits not only recipients but also donors, as people derive some selfish utility from giving. Impure altruism may be laden with different egocentric motivations ranging from the desire to win prestige, respect, and friendship (Olson, 1995) to the avoidance of social pressure or guilt (Becker, 1974). Within the framework of the impure altruism, Andreoni (1989, 1990) draws scholarly attention to the warm glow phenomenon and demonstrates that giving may be intrinsically joyful, generating pleasure and inner satisfaction. Owing to this seemingly selfish motivation, impure altruism is the concurrent definition for warm glow, often used in the literature.

Keywords: Impure altruism

Publication based on the results of: Self-organization of citizens and the public administration system: a theory of mutual influence, the experience of Russia and other non-western countries and ways of improving the effectiveness of productive interaction (2025)

In book

International Encyclopedia of Civil Society

Springer Nature Switzerland AG, 2020.