Civic Solidarity: Civicness and Willingness to Pay for the Poor in Vietnam

Abstract

What makes people more willing to pay for fighting hunger and poverty, to give to charity, and to transfer a portion of their incomes to poorest regions? In this paper, I argue that the active participation in civic life that nurtures civicness in ones mind reinforces the habits of the heart and instills a sense of solidarity and empathy toward less fortunate co-members of the community, thereby shaping preferences over social issues in favor of redistributive policies. By analyzing the 2017 Vietnam Provincial Governance and Public Administration Performance Index individual-level survey dataset, the paper shows that eight indicators of civicness of respondents, individually as well as collectively, prove strongly significant in explaining the variation in their willingness to pay for the poor in Vietnam.