Adela Lazăr

(1) Background: Sustainability is a crucial priority and a critical part of the modern world. Promoting pro-social values to the younger generation is an issue addressed throughout this paper. The present study aims to answer the question of whether generosity, as a positive attitude towards others, and sustainability, as a positive attitude towards the environment, are related. (2) Methods: The current research includes a sample of 4333 adolescents, ages 14 and 15, who attend schools in Bihor County, Romania. (3) Results: The regression analysis indicates a significant correlation between sustainable values, operationalized through adolescent involvement in environmental organisations, and generosity. (4) Conclusions: Sustainable behaviour can be considered a form of giving that contributes to the collective good. Our research outlines a significant need for a new set of competencies provided through a newly designed curriculum and/or through focused training, in order to cultivate generosity across cultures, ecologies, and generations; at the same time, we also highlight the significant role that the joint efforts of the school-family-library trifecta in supporting this goal.

European Philanthropic Behavior Patterns: Charitable Giving, Non-Profit and Welfare Regimes in the European Union

The article draws on the results of a survey conducted in the schools from Bihor county in 2018-2019. The study analyses the answers of 4261 eighth grade pupils regarding generosity and its predictors. The actual research is an extension of our article from 2016 in which we analyse similar data collected in 2011. In our first results we observed a significant correlation between generosity and socio-economic background and between generosity and gender. Considering the results of our previous research we conducted the present research using new data and adding new hypotheses like the influence of religiosity. As we expected, grounded on the literature, our new results indicate that religiosity explains generosity variation among Romanian 8th grade pupils from Bihor county. It seems that general trust, school results, living environment (rural vs. urban) have no influence, an aspect which can be explained, at least partially, by the specificity of the Romanian culture. Religious girls with higher economic background are most generous. Also, as we found in our first research, there is a homogeneity of schools concerning the generosity level. We consider that the results of our research can contribute significantly to a better understanding of generosity and its specificity in our country, and the results can be valorised in other studies or programs of the non-profit organizations, fundraising campaign.