The Perceived Difference: The Sector Stereotype of Social Service Providers

EasyChair Preprint 1114

Abstract

What difference does “nonprofitness” make is a fundamental question for research, practices, and policymaking of the nonprofit sector. Contrary to the arguably unclear boundary between the nonprofit and the for-profit sector suggested by early literature, this study proposed and examined the existence of the perceived difference, the sector stereotype, from a social psychology perspective. We established a framework to map the process of the sector stereotype to theorize how people use the sector label to categorize the focal organization and make judgment loading on warmth and competence. Evidence from two experiments suggested that people perceive nonprofits as being warmer and slightly more competent than for-profits, and such stereotypical understanding mainly results from people’s repugnance against profit-seeking intention instead of preferences toward nonprofits in the social service market. This study further suggested that the sector stereotype might function as an barrier for increasingly blurry boundary between the nonprofit and the for-profit.

Keyphrases: nonprofitness, public perception, sector boundary, sector stereotype

@booklet{EasyChair:1114,
  author    = {Chengxin Xu},
  title     = {The Perceived Difference: The Sector Stereotype of Social Service Providers},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 1114},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2019}}