Switching role from recipient to provider: How autonomy-oriented help stimulates recipients' online helping behaviour

Growing attention has been directed toward the phenomenon of “helping forward”—the act of providing help after receiving it. However, the cognitive mechanisms underlying how recipients transition into help providers remain underexplored. Drawing on three-wave data from 457 employees in mainland China, we found that receiving autonomy-oriented help increases other-praising emotion and moral responsibility—expressed as moral ownership or felt obligation—which subsequently promotes online helping behaviour. Recipients with high moral courage are more likely to translate these psychological responses into helping behaviour. The analysis further reveals that moral ownership and felt obligation constitute essential mediators in this process, whereas other-praising emotion serves as a non-essential but reinforcing factor. These results highlight the role of perceived responsibility in “paying help forward” and offer insights into fostering online helping behaviour in organizational contexts.