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Prior campus experience and alumni donation: a cross-cultural study of China and the USA

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Abstract

Few studies have been conducted to investigate the role that alumni’s prior campus experience may play in future donation behavior. The theory of planned behavior (TPB) and the affect theory of social exchange were applied to examine the underlying relationship between campus experience and donation behavior by incorporating relevant factors including student engagement, sense of belonging, educational satisfaction, alumni participation, and obligation to give. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was employed to portray these relationships, and multigroup analyses were performed to compare the findings from two samples of US (n = 535) and Chinese (n = 510) alumni. The results suggested that student engagement is an antecedent of sense of belonging, which in turn leads to alumni’s obligation to give. Furthermore, educational satisfaction and alumni participation mediate the relationship between sense of belonging and obligation to give. In contrast, the effect of sense of obligation to give on donation behavior is significant only for US alumni, and the strengths of the relationships among the constructs differ between the two samples. Cultural factors that may explain these differences are discussed. Appropriate measures for increasing alumni donation by optimizing students’ campus experiences in conformance with the cultural characteristics of the society are suggested.

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This paper is supported by the Humanities and Social Sciences Foundation of the Chinese Ministry of Education (Grant number: 19YJC880048). The funder had no role in performing the study and the study was performed independently by the authors.

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  1. Center for Higher Education Research, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China

    Xianping Liang

  2. School of Humanities, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, China

    You Su

  3. School of Marxism, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China

    Weiwei Shang

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Liang, X., Su, Y. & Shang, W. Prior campus experience and alumni donation: a cross-cultural study of China and the USA. High Educ 86, 865–889 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-022-00948-z

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