Charity work of local community: results of the sociological research in the Russian region

In recent years, the participation of citizens in the solution of social problems and society’s self-organization has become an important research agenda. Public practices are perceived as a crucial resource for socio-economic development at the state and local levels. The purpose of this paper is to identify the development level and features of motivation for participation/non-participation in charitable activities from the standpoint of the Russian region’s local community. We present an approach to the essence and components of charity based on a critical analysis of academic literature. Through a mass public opinion survey in the Vologda Oblast, 2019; N=1900), we revealed the level of local community’s involvement in certain charity forms (helping behavior, monetary donations, volunteerism as part of public organizations’ activities). A low level of population’s participation in formal charitable practices, related to work of voluntary associations, and high informal charitable activity in various forms of helping behavior draw some attention. Using a factor analysis of latent variables, the authors determined that social norms and religious values are among the main factors that encourage a local community to engage in charity work. In addition, we revealed that the formed idea about the predominance of other entities’ social responsibility (primarily - the state) and suspicious attitude to a charity system become serious obstacles to the inclusion of a local community in charitable activities. The study on the current state of charitable activity in Russia’s local communities can provide an empirical basis and theoretical impetus for basic research in this area and for practical work aimed at studying specific types of activities to increase population’s involvement in local charity.