Helping Behaviors and the Perception of Helping Intentions among Employees at Oromia Regional Offices, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
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Date
2023-05
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The goal of this research aimed at investigating helping behaviours and intentions among
employees at Oromia regional offices, Ethiopia. Employees were selected proportionally
from six randomly chosen Oromia regional offices by contemplating the distribution of
gender in each office. The questionnaire included Prosocial Tendencies Measure–Revised
(PTM-R), Prosocial Behavioural Intentions Scale (PBIS) and Empathic Concern
questionnaire in addition to socio-demographic questionnaire. 263 study participants—167
men and 96 women—completely filled the distributed questionnaire. Collected data were
examined with inferential as well as descriptive statistics. This study's results suggested that
respondents considerably demonstrated dire prosocial activity in reaction to the crisis or
emergency caused by COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing drought, political instability and
conflicts in the country. They also highly engaged in compliant prosocial acts in response to
requests made either verbally or nonverbally by those who were affected by the
aforementioned situations. Females outperformed males in terms of emotional, anonymous,
public, and overall prosocial behaviours. The employees' religious practises, marital status,
educational background, and monthly income all had a significant impact on their public
prosocial behaviours. Likewise, anonymous prosocial behaviours were reliant on marriage,
education level and monthly income; emotional prosocial behaviours were determined by
religion, education and income, while dire prosocial behaviours were correlated with
respondents' religious experiences and monthly income. All prosocial behaviour subtypes
and intentions were strongly and positively connected, except for the fact that both compliant
and dire prosocial acts were not substantially connected with public and altruistic prosocial
behaviours. The study participants' prosocial behaviours were significantly and positively
connected with their prosocial intentions and empathetic concern. Moreover, the
respondents' empathy for others was a positive predictor of their readiness to help others.