Informal helping: Insights from a dyadic, family, and societal perspective

Grocery shopping for a neighbor, driving a friend to an appointment, helping a cousin with gardening. Many people engage in these small, informal helping behaviors. Hence, they are often considered the glue of Western societies. This type of helping, often known as informal helping, builds stronger connections between people and signals who to count if more intensive help is required. Informal helping may be becoming even more important due to welfare policies relying more and more on citizen participation. This dissertation offers new insights into informal helping behavior from a dyadic, family and society level perspective. It concludes that providing informal help to family, friends and neighbors inspires others to do the same through processes of socialization and reciprocity. More broadly, being motivated to help is a major driver of informal helping. These motivations can stem from experiences between the helper and the recipient (e.g. expecting the recipient to reciprocate help later), in the family context (e.g. seeing a parent engage in informal helping) or the society level (e.g. the COVID-19 pandemic increasing feelings of solidarity). However, the amount of informal help provided differs between family members, friends and neighbors. Especially informal help exchange between neighbors is limited. The dissertation highlights the importance of the social environment in studying and promoting informal help.