To disclose or not? The impact of prosocial behavior disclosure on the attainment of social capital on social networking sites

Abstract

While some donors and volunteers do not publicize their prosocial behaviors because of humility, many others fear that disclosing their prosocial behaviors may be perceived as bragging. With the rise of social networking sites (SNSs), this has become an essential issue with important business implications. As more companies encourage employees to volunteer a small portion of their work time and match their charitable contributions, disclosing these prosocial acts on social media platforms has become more common. Building upon social capital theory, we apply a mixed-method approach to investigate the relationship between the disclosure of prosocial behaviors and the attainment of social capital on SNSs. Our first exploratory study applies qualitative interviews to explore the factors that moderate the relationship between the disclosure of prosocial behaviors and the attainment of social capital. Our second study utilizes a randomized online experiment in the U.S. to test the causal effect of prosocial behavior disclosure on social capital attainment online, as well as two moderators of this relationship. A post-hoc replication study of our experiment is conducted in China. We find that the disclosure of prosocial behavior increases relational and structural social capital on SNSs but find no evidence of the impact of the disclosure of prosocial behavior on cognitive social capital. The effect becomes stronger when one's prosocial behavior is disclosed by others (rather than by oneself) in the U.S. sample. Our findings inform SNSs users to make informed decisions regarding disclosing prosocial behaviors to attain structural and relational social capital. Businesses encouraging their employees to donate/volunteer and charities on the receiving end could also benefit from our findings.