An analysis of the effects of weather on pro-social behaviour

This thesis researches the effect of weather variables on pro-social behaviour. Pro-social behaviour describes the behaviour that takes the utility of unrelated others into account as opposed to the selfish behaviour that traditional economics has typically assumed in the past. If there is a relation between the weather and pro-social behaviour this could mean that behaviour is erratic and economic models and expectations need to take that into account. This research combines an existing dataset from a survey on the relation between guilt and pro-social behaviour with weather data from the The Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute to find out what the relations are between temperature, sunshine duration, precipitation, atmospheric pressure, humidity, wind speed, and seven variables describing pro-social behaviour. In addition a factor is made out of the seven pro-sociality factors for an additional test of its relation with the weather variables. The results show that precipitation amount has a significant positive effect on pro-social behaviour in two out of eight cases. Atmospheric pressure and temperature each have a significant positive effect on pro-social behaviour in one out of eight cases. Humidity has a negative significant effect on pro-social behaviour in one out of eight cases. Five out of eight regressions showed no relation of any of the weather variables and pro-social behaviour. Despite these few significant findings, as a whole this research shows no clear and consistent relation between any of the weather variables and pro-social behaviour.