The Effects of Spiritual Capital on Altruistic Economic Behavior

In this paper, we outline a research project to investigate whether and how spiritual capital affects the economic behavior of individuals. We define spiritual capital as a set of intangible objects in the form of rules for interacting with people, nature, and spiritual beings (God, gods, buddhas, angels, evil spirits as believed to exist by individuals and in different religions) and believed knowledge about tangible and spiritual worlds. These rules and knowledge govern and direct behavior between individuals or between an individual and the natural world (hereafter we use the phrase “natural and spiritual realm” to refer to both nature and the spiritual beings that many doctrines believe to exist). Under our definition (detailed below), spiritual capital is conceptually distinct from physical, human, or social capital because the payoff to spiritual capital includes returns that accrue in both the near term and in the long term – possibly even after death. In this sense our definition of spiritual capital is related to some interpretations of Weber’s (1905) work. For example, our definition is related to the idea given in Cavalcanti, Parante, and Zhao (2003), who propose that individuals may believe that utility in the afterlife depends on the economic achievement of this life. Our definition is different from the approach adopted by Zou (1994) and Bakshi and Chen (1996) because they include the level of capital as an argument in the utility function in addition to a consumption stream. In these formulations of Weber’s idea, the Christian doctrines as practiced by Protestants constitute human capital that affects