The Influence of Church and Synagogue Attendance on the Probability of Giving and Volunteering

This paper uses the Logistic regression technique to explore the relationship between the decisions to give and volunteer and frequency of church/synagogue attendance. Our empirical results support the hypothesis that frequency of church/synagogue attendance increases the likelihood of giving and volunteering. The paper also finds that when church/synagogue attendance falls below the threshold level of once a week, frequency of religious service attendance loses its influence on individual charitable behavior. The author's findings suggest that whether an individual is a member of a church or professes to believe in a religion is not as good a predictor of individual charitable behavior as frequency of church1 synagogue attendance.